From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V7 #245 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Sunday, December 8 2002 Volume 07 : Number 245 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: Beatniking a dead horse? ["Crackers" ] RE: Alloy: Beatniking a dead horse? ["Bill Krzysko" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 20:18:24 -0800 From: "Crackers" Subject: Re: Alloy: Beatniking a dead horse? - ----- Original Message ----- From: "PRAEst76" > He might have a point. Too many general words are slipping out of free use > due to lax trademark registering. I mean, if I describe something as > "Beatnik" in a public capacity can I get sued by them? Yeah, I remember when Lipton tried to trademark with word "batsmuthi" which is a species of rice from India. They actually were able to trademark the word but when they tried to defend the trademark they lost as the word is and was common use long before Lipton's trademark. What I thought was odd was it seems they were unfairly taking their grief out on poor Thomas. As we all know Thomas is in the secretive "Phase Two" and no longer making the policy at Beatnik Inc. I couldn't find anything on the site either that Beatnik Inc. would have gotten up in arms about either as the word didn't even show up in any of their other articles. Too bizarre. Crackers Ghastly's Ghastly Comic http://ghastly.keenspace.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 21:19:12 -0600 From: "Bill Krzysko" Subject: RE: Alloy: Beatniking a dead horse? I've had to deal with this issue before, and a lot of people misunderstand what trademarks cover. There are two ways you can get into trouble using someone else's trademark. The first is infringement. This would be when you tried to pass off your product as someone else's, or trying to confuse people into thinking that your product is the same as another. So, in this case, you would only have a problem if you tried to sell some kind of audio software and called it Beatnik, or perhaps you might call it Beatnick and hope people think your product is really the Beatnik product. The other issue with trademarks is dilution. This is when your product might not directly be confused with another product, but could cast it in an unflattering way. So, if I would come out with a magazine about say, having sex with animals, and decided to call it Beatnik, it wouldn't infringe on the trademark, since someone isn't likely to go looking for audio software and come home with a magazine thinking this is what they wanted. But associating the trademark with an unflattering product could case a negative association in peoples minds that could hurt Beatnik. So, in this case they might be able to sue on those grounds. Actually, it was only in 1995 that a US Federal trademark dilution law was passed, primarily because of attempts to highjack domain names. Dilution is a much harder case to prove for a trademark, and it's really hard if the trademark is a common word. ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V7 #245 ***************************