[ga] trademark issues
Pat.. I can give you one even more complicated which will probably end up before the courts before it is over and is totally mind-boggling in many areas. The term bull and bear is symbolic of markets the world over and dates back to the 15th century at least - probably longer. Both the NYSE and the Singapore exchange have statues in their lobbies - and probably a lot more firms. The bull is symbolic of a market going up - or a person who buys and a bear symbolic of a market going down - or a person who sells. It is used as a noun, adjective and verb or a part of it and absolutely no idea in how many languages. In addition, of course, there are the animals and the thousands of sports teams who use part of it - but they don't count :) In researching it, the first use I could find goes back to the Vatican. The term was first used as bulla-beara - which was a hated term for the messenger delivering the bad notices from the Vatican - like a financial statement of taxes owed, property being repossessed, or your head if you were a woman involved in adultry :) .. The bulla being a leather pouch or bull a proclamation issued by teh Pope. The bearea is , of course, the bearer of such bad news. The term "boogie bear" also goes back to it too. In my opinion, there is absolutely no way a name like this can be protected by trademark laws even tho one was granted on Bull & Bear. You have to be able to police or control the use of your trademark which is impossible in this case since every paper in the world would be in violation, along with restaurants, bars, clubs, jewelry, reports, books, magazines, t-shirt mfgrs, etc., etc., etc. Last time I checked there were over a million uses of it on the internet, and some 800 sites registered using it or one part of it - yet one corporation TM owner claims rights to it which is ridiculous. Of course, I'm prejudiced! :) jess In a message dated 4/7/2001 2:03:03 PM Central Daylight Time, patrick@quad.net.au writes: >>In Australia, nobody would associate "Freedom Furniture" with "Freedom Tampons" but everybody would easily recognise the two very well lnown brands. I don't know whether they both have exactly the same mark "Freedom" but clearly they could have. Both would be entitled to claim the domain name>> |