Goliaths’ enforcement draws attention
Google has been the subject of recent media coverage regarding its letters sent to media organizations warning them not to use its trade-mark as a verb. While the media reports suggest Google has lost its sense of humour and bloggers poke fun at the examples Google’s lawyers have provided as acceptable usage of the trade-mark, a principal tenet regarding trade-mark usage is being glossed over. Trade-marks are valuable assets of a business, the use of which must be policed by the owner.
As Google and its lawyers correctly point out, a trade-mark is an adjective and should not be used as a verb or a noun. If a mark is used as a noun or a verb, it risks being genericized and losing its distinctiveness.A non-distinctive mark is likely not enforceable by the owner against others.
Google’s tremendous success in building its brand is a double-edged sword. The GOOGLE mark is now so well known that its use has entered the everyday language – there are now dictionary entries in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster which list “to google”.
On a related note, Apple is also policing use of its IPOD mark – trying to stop “pod” from being used by others in association with their products or services, claiming such use infringes its IPOD trade-mark.
Large successful companies such as Google and Apple may be painted as “Goliaths” in their campaigns to ensure proper use of their marks or stop infringement. Given the value of their brands (see the BusinessWeek Online/Interbrand Top 100 Brands), it’s hard to blame them. In fact, their shareholders would skewer management if it didn’t take this stance.
This entry was posted by Karen Monteith on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 11:56 am and is filed under Protection & Enforcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “Goliaths’ enforcement draws attention”
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it strikes me that one of the challenges your blog will be faced with is commenting on matters that are as dynamic as those that consistently show up in the U.S., specifically, before the TTAB, while not simply repeating the offerings of other more established tm bloggers.
by way of example, i’m referring to the Aug. 12th post from
http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/ concerning “POD.”
nevertheless, it’s good to see some local action on the trademark blog front and i suspect in time a niche will develop.
congrats and i look forward to reading.
Thanks for your comment. I agree wholeheartedly with you and ask you to bear with us as we find our own voice/perspective in the blogosphere. In hindsight, the posting on Google and IPOD should have been “Canadianized” (if that’s a proper term) by referencing the efforts of Vanoc (which is the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler) to protect the various trademarks associated with the Olympics – for example by aggressively going after local Vancouver/Whistler businesses that have engaged in ambush marketing, which Vanoc defines as adopting the words “Olympic”, “Vancouver 2010″ or anything similar after January 1998 – see this.
Thanks again.