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It's funny. Laugh. Your Rights Online

When Trademark Protection Gets Ridiculous 36

Posted by timothy from the we-own-what-you-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "Sellotape New Zealand Limited have recently sent out a number of letters to New Zealanders who have used the word 'Sellotape' on their websites. Sellotape is a brand of adhesive tape. It appears they are attempting to crack down on the use of their trademark in a colloquial/generic sense out of fear that their Trademark value is being diluted and that they may even lose the rights to the mark under proposed new New Zealand legislation. Many of those who have received these letters and/or heard about it regard this as monumentally stupid. One such group of individuals has gone as far as setting up a web-site dedicated to parodying the situation and informing the New Zealand public what they can do to fight back against these 'Big Business Bullies.'"
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When Trademark Protection Gets Ridiculous More

When Trademark Protection Gets Ridiculous

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  • curious -- Is Sellotape to New Zealand what Scotch Tape is to the US?

    If so, then their is pretty much invalid by the fact that it's considered a generic term by the public. Kinda like the MS v. LindowsOS case, where MS might lose their on Windows because it's a generic term.

    IANAL.
  • I suppose they'll now be sending cease-and-desist letters to Douglas Adams' estate and/or publisher for his trademark dilution of "sellotape" in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The HHGttG.

    I wonder how many other books currently in print would have to be revised...

  • Some of this is the governments fault (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mfos.org ( 471768 ) on Monday July 01, 2002 @08:59AM (#3800082)
    Unfortunatly some of the fault rests with the government in this case. They really don't leave the company that much of a choice, either sue the people who are using it in a generic way, or lose substantial rights to the mark.
    • Unfortunatly some of the fault rests with the government in this case. They really don't leave the company that much of a choice, either sue the people who are using it in a generic way, or lose substantial rights to the mark.

      You make an intersting point. I think the best fix would be something as follows:

      • Limit the duration of a trademark to some relatively short time, e.g. 10 years.
      • Require active protection of the trademark in the commercial setting, but explicitly disallow the suing of individuals for using the term in a "generic" sense.
      • Allow trademarks to be renewed, but disallow renewal for trademarks that have entered the mainstream language in a generic fashion (e.g. Xerox, Kleenex).


      It is intolerable that letigious thuggary can be used to coerce the common use of language. If (for example) SnowBlowz become a generic term for nasal drip suppressent, then the company can revert to "Johnson & Johnson SnowBlowz" as their trademark instead.

      This regime that encourages, even requires, the wholesale attack of individuals by corporations for using their trademark in common everyday language is absolutely intolerable.

      • This is actually how trademark law works in most countries in the world. The only difference is that renewal tends to be automatic, assuming you pay the renewal fee. So a company could end up paying renewal fees for twenty or thirty years for a trademark that should have been refused at the second renewal, for example.

        And once a word is generic, no amount of letters is going to make it a distinct mark again. The problem is of course in the period just before that. The company can then try to turn the tide by writing letters like the one in the original article, although this is often not a success.

  • MIPS did the same thing to me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) on Monday July 01, 2002 @08:59AM (#3800085) Homepage Journal
    I made a MIPS compatable CPU [man.ac.uk] and they told me off for it and threatened a lot of legal action.
    After pointing out I didnt break any of their IPs they started complaining that I was calling it a MIPS reather than a MIPS microprocessor. Apparently this dilutes their TM.
    They didnt want to conseed on the fact that MIPS stands for "Microprocessor without interlocking pipelines".
  • Silly, anonymous NZ reader. Doesn't he realize that he's at Slashdot? All we care about here is the rights of Americans! Someone point this lost soul to slashdot.nz.

    ;)

    It's a joke, mods...calm down.
  • When I was at my dotcom job, working for a large educational content producer, we used to get email and paper letters all the time from companies indicating that our news style stories contained references to their trademark without the requisite tm. Books-On-Tape used to send email to webmaster@ once a week. We also heard from Jacuzzi.

    These letters were quickly discarded. We were never sued. We were never handed cease and desist letters. Hardly heavy handed big business.

    In many countries, the US especially, if you do not defend your trademark, you can lose it. If you don't send notice of violation to every use you become aware of, someone can try to prove that you had abandoned your trademark, if they can prove you knew about it. Most courts would laugh this right out of the courtroom. But this is not a time to start attributing rational actions to Intellectual Property courts.

    Reading the text of the requests on the smellotape site it's obvious that this is what's going on.

    So, in essence, someone got pissy about it, even though it's largely irrelevant and started a website to complain. Slashdot, that veritable wasteland of journalistic and editorial standards, jumps right on the bandwagon because, hey, did someone mention the web?

  • I'm fed up... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mixbsd ( 574131 )
    ... when I read a manual (yes! some of us do read 'em) and continually see blah(TM) this blah® that in every sentence. There's just no need.

    So it's more a case of watering-down the documentation than watering down the trademark recognition.

    And anyway, in some parts of the world (Oz, for one) the name for Sellotape is actually Durex, which also happens to be the brand of condoms sold in the UK. In other words, people *know* what the product is, because of the context in which it is used. We don't need (TM) or ® to remind us!
  • I believe that under current Trademark law companies will lose their trademark if they do not defend it. (someone will most likely correct me if i am wrong) So, what's wrong with them defending their trademark? It's their name, they own it. If they don't want you to use it, then they can tell you not to.

    They probably don't want their name to be diluted like Scotch Tape, Post-Its, Band-aids, Kleenex, etc. and that's not "monumentally stupid", it's their right. I don't see the point in bitching about a company that's doing what it's supposed to. Microsoft, RIAA and MPAA are worth bitching about... This is just ridiculous.

    Sounds like some folks in New Zealand have too much time on their hands.

    • The problem is that in some parts of the world the term "Sellotape" has already been diluted, and is commonly used to talk about "Scotch Tape", even in some work of literature (by Douglas Adams for sure, probably others).

      Had they done this way since the beginning it would have been their right, but now it seems to be too late. It seems that they enjoied the spreading of the word in common use when it gave them good publicity, and now that they're well known they begin protecting their name. Looks like what some software house did with the so called piracy.

  • Companies are forced to do stuff like this to keep Trademarks. See: "Is pepsi Ok?" in eateries when one asks for a Coke; the generic term Asprin, etc etc.

    It sounds to me like Sellotape is being fairly reasonable about the whole thing, even allowing continued use of the mark, provided that it's documented correctly.
    Why does this make Sellotape the bad guys? They're trying to protect a valuable asset, and doing it in a pretty non-heavy handed way. I read the letter, and it didn't threaten legal action in the way that sort of letter typically does, it merely requested proper use of a trademark..
  • Has anyone ever calculated the lost revenue from all this worthless legal action. The costs seem to break down as this to me:

    1. Time spent figuring out we need to wast money going after the average Joe for using modern vernaculer.
    2. Getting the lawyers/whoever to do the research to find all the people using "our Trademark" in the wrong way or for the wrong reason and find their addresses (involves meetings and possibly multiple people researching, factor in multiple people).
    3. Have the lawyers draft a letter (this could involve meetings, so factor in mulitple people).
    4. Approving the letter (requires meetings, you get the point).
    5. Send the letter certified mail, as that is the only "legal" method (only one person, but sending a couple hundrend letter certified return reciept isn't cheap).
    6. Wait for replies and monitor sites.
    7. Assuming they do or don't reply, go from there.

    My guess is this costs hundrends of millions a year, if not billions, and for the most part does little other then give lawyers jobs. Oh well.
  • Big noises at odds over the sound of silence
    http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?st ory=30744 9

    From the daily rotten:
    http://www.dailyrotten.com/
    Cheers,
    -b
  • I've got to say, that I really don't see the problem.

    They didn't sue the person or anything like that. It's simply a nicely phrased letter from the company asking them to either replace the phrase with a generic one (sticky-tape), or place a registered trademark symbol after it.

    That's all.

    It was rather pleasant in fact. And makes perfect sense. As I would agree (not with the law, but with the action taken in response), that if I had been making a product, under a certain brand-name for 50 years. And this brandname is in danger of OTHER people being allowed to use it. I would defend it.

    Otherwise, suddenly everyone is selling your brand name, and there is no distinction between your 'good product' that everyone has come to love, and the next guys cheap ripoff!
  • Hmm... maybe this is a stupid question but wouldn't a company want their product to be so well known that they lose their trademark.

    I mean, how often do people buy band-aid brand or kleenex brand because they hear those names everytime someone refers to self adhesive bandages or facial tissue.

    Sellotape(r) should lighten up and realize that they're getting free advertising.

    I think the real concern is that competitors will start calling thier product sellotape pretending to be actual Sellotape(r) but has this kind of thing ever happened? I've never seen facial tissue that wasn't made by kleenex be called kleenex on the box.
  • The whole trademark thing is getting stupid. On the one hand, the companies have to defend their trademarks or they lose them (compare to Bayer Aspirin (original German brand) which is now generic in the rest of the world. In Germany, you still get Bayer Aspirin if you ask for 'aspirin' rather than the cheaper generic brand (I saw this on /., can't remember where)).

    Similarly Microsoft now don't have the Windows thing (cf. Lindows) as they didn't pursue the thing until it was threatened with a rival product rather than a 'friendly' one.

    On the other hand, it's got out of control. Everytihng has TM or R or Copyright or whatever. During a recent visit the the US, I was appalled to see so many. Much worse than here in the UK. Amongst the other things which had been trademarked, copyrighted and registered were a number of common phrases and words like "Smile" (I shit you not).

    Clearly whatever legislation exists is either flawed or not working. I can respect the point of view of the company (I am sure if they'd sent a letter (not through a lawyer) saying "sorry about this, but we have to ask that you change your site to keep our lawyers happy, here are our reasons, we may have to take it further if you don't change it within a reasonable time" rather than being heavy handed this would never have been such an issue). But respecting their position doesn't make me think that the situation is any more ridiculous.

    Is there a way that these things could be settled without litigation? Couldn't a 'common sense' law be written in as well, so that companies don't have to pursue their trademarks if they think that they are being used in a way they approve?

    Anyway, something needs to be done about US companies trademarking everything, whether they came up with it or not. If I say "Smile" to someone then the last thing I want is to be hit with a lawsuit because some prick says that as his names writen next to it on a legal pad somewhere, it's his.

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