Re: Trademarks, random strings, sharing, reserved words

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 03:29 PM 01/12/97 +0000, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:

>On Jan 7, 16:46, Albert Tramposch wrote:
>
>> >And what does "united" mean to someone from Turkey?
>> 
>> "United" means a lot to someone in Turkey if they want to book a flight
to L.A.
>> using United Airline's home page.  This is the point of the Internet:
it is
>> making commerce global in a big way.
>
>"United" is not a coined word, and has no chance of making it as a trademark
>anywhere in the world. United Airlines should use "united-airlines.com".
>In the same way, the brewery "United Distillers" should use
"united-distillers.com",
>etc. etc. Just having "united.com" is a clueless use of the Net.

Your point that "united" is not a coined word, and is in fact a word out of
the dictionary, is an important one.  Whoever happens to register
"united.com" first should get to keep it if they wish, and no one should be
able to take it from them.

>Later on you mention "Pepsi". Pepsi is really "Pepsi-Cola" and the company
>is "Pepsico", a coined word. -> pepsi-cola.com or pepsico.com

Here I disagree a little.  "Pepsi" is not "really" "Pepsi-Cola".  It is
true that "Pepsi" as a word has its origins in "Pepsi-Cola" but that does
not mean that "Pepsi" is "really" "Pepsi-Cola".  Either character string is
unique worldwide, associated only with the Pepsi product.  The Pepsi-Cola
company probably ought to be able to convince almost any court, almost
anywhere in the world, to stop someone from using either character string.

>Same for Coca Cola.

Coca-Cola is different, for several reasons.  First, "coca" is a dictionary
word, the name of the plant from which cocaine (and some of the flavoring
elements for Coca-Cola) is produced.  Second, "cola" is also a generic term
that predated the Coca-Cola product.  Third, even the commonly used
nickname "Coke" is not a coined term, but is in fact character-identical to
"coke" which is an industrial fuel that was in use long before the
Coca-Cola product.

>You comments about "Pontiac" (a coined word) stand, and I agree with them.

Nope.  Pontiac was the name of a Native American chief, over two centuries
ago.  See
<http://www.csulb.edu/gc/libarts/am-indian/nae/chapter_1/001_002_1.53.txt>.
 Query whether the auto maker obtained rights to the name from the
decendants of that person.