Re: Debian, Iceweasle, Firefox!
Max Hyre wrote:
> John Hasler wrote:
>> Angelo writes:
>>> It was reiterated by Mozilla that if it doesn't do this, it will lose
>>> some ability to protect its trademarks. IANAL, but somehow it just
>>> doesn't sound right to me.
>>
>> It needn't be right in order to be true. Trademark law is loony.
>
> Actually, it's right, true, and not at all loony.
>
> Think about what a trademark is: a way to tell the buyer
> exactly what she's getting. If Kimberly-Clark let any old
> tissue maker put `Kleenex' on their box, there wouldn't be
> any purpose to the name, would there? So, K-C has to insist
> the name only be used for their product, and none other. [1]
> Therefore, the law simply recognizes that if things have
> gotten to the point where the name no longer specifies a
> particular maker's product, it has no use as a trademark,
> and therefore isn't one, and the owner loses the right to
> claim it as such. [2]
I believe K-C already lost the ability to enforce Kleenex as a trademark
after uptake made their brand the generic word for "disposable tissue
primarily intended for your nose." Hormel is fighting an uphill battle and
using very specific capitalization to avoid the same thing happening to
their trademark SPAM. Xerox seems to have largely won it's fight against
uptake at this point (that being said, I haven't seen an actual Xerox
copier in years... do they still make 'em?).
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