After reading about some news regarding trademarks, I began to wonder whether "anything" could be accepted as trademarks. After doing some searches on Google, I found out there were some failures in obtaining trademarks.
For example, Twitter failed to trademark its phrase "tweet," just because a third-party developer trademarked it before them. So instead, Twitter went ahead and trademarked the phrase, "let your ad meet tweets."
Former vice president candidate Sarah Palin also failed to trademark something. What did she try to trademark? Her NAME.
There are plenty of other examples of failures in trademarking, but some companies are waiting on their trademark application to be accepted.
For example, Subway has tried to trademark its phrase "footlong" for several years now, but other fast food chains have heavily opposed to this, disabling Subway to hold any rights to this phrase.
There are several more notable examples here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-ridiculous-trademarking-attempts-2011-4?op=1
Hm, it appears that the trademark game bears resemblance to website URLs. I'm not necessarily sure it's unfair for companies like Twitter to not get "tweet" as a trademark because they can easily purchase the trademark, but I can see where there are ethical qualms with not being able to trademark your own name. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteInteresting finds Elisa! I wonder why Twitter ended up trademarking that phrase. It actually seems weird to me that people would be allowed to trademark entire phrases
ReplyDeleteWow! Interesting find! I think it's crazy that Facebook trademarked the word 'face'. It just seems like the most bizarre request!
ReplyDeleteThat's ridiculous, these are so many instances of hilarious trademarking - McDonald is a big culprit of doing so.
ReplyDeleteThis is absurd, but truly reveals how lucrative filing a trademark can be. This is also a testament to how prevalent branding is in our society and how a simple name, logo, or branding, can make or break the success of a business venture.
ReplyDeleteHaha, great article! While I think trademarks are useful tools for legal use, it is also a great tool to question the motives of people such as Snooki and Sarah Palin.
ReplyDeletewhat you brought up is really interesting. now it makes us wonder what the possible 'trademark restrictions' are. can people trademark the entire phrase / their names?
ReplyDeletealso wonder why she'd wanna trademark her name. that's just weird.
Why did the guy patented "tweet" and how much twitter offered for that patent. This shows that there are so many words or phrases that could be very valuable in the future. I would start patents for catch words as a future investment.
ReplyDeleteI read an article about this too! How Ron Paul is trying to get a hold of the domain name "RonPaul.com" but as it already exists and is owned by the grassroots campaign that launched him into the political scene.
ReplyDeleteEveryone in the end is just feeling offended, Ron Paul because he can't own the website named after him and his supporters because they feel that they have earned the right to operate the website that helped get him elected.
Wow, I did not realize the word trademark covered so many topics. It is interesting that even in failure, these companies have still managed to create a brand for themselves using phrases extremely similar to what they originally wanted.
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