Techdirt. Stories filed under "generic" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "generic"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:03:00 PST Bank Threatens Reporter Over Trademark For Using The Term 'Virtual Wallet' Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130217/23462522009/bank-threatens-reporter-over-trademark-using-term-virtual-wallet.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130217/23462522009/bank-threatens-reporter-over-trademark-using-term-virtual-wallet.shtml really about avoiding consumer confusion, so they don't buy one product trusting that it's another product. It is not about "ownership" in any sense. And yet so many companies (and individuals) think that if they get a trademark on a word or phrase, they can basically stop anyone else from ever using it.

The latest example of trademark overreach comes from PNC Bank, who threatened a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for having the gall to use the phrase "virtual wallet" in an article. PNC sent a legal nastygram, telling the SF Chronicle that it must "refrain from misuse of our client's VIRTUAL WALLET trademark." Except, of course, that's hogwash. Nothing in trademark law could possibly make that true, and the Chronicle's James Temple responded appropriately:
To which I say: virtual wallet, virtual wallet, virtual wallet, virtual wallet.
Furthermore, he notes that the trademark itself is almost certainly invalid, as the phrase was in widespread common usage for many years before 2008 when the bank sought the trademark (and, ridiculously, the USPTO granted it).
In late 1994, Newsweek published an article titled "The Age of Cybercash" that informed readers: "Your virtual wallet may soon be here."

By the end of 2007, the term "virtual wallet" had appeared more than 700 times in the English press, including in American Banker, the Economist, the New York Times and Consumer Reports.

Nevertheless, the following year, PNC Financial Services Group launched a "Virtual Wallet" product. It sought trademark protection, asking to own the commercial rights to two consecutive words that had been pushed together by the press and industry more than a decade earlier.
Temple goes on to call out others who have sought to abuse trademark law to "homestead" the English language -- including our favorite trademark troll ever, Leo Stoller, who "trademarked" all kinds of words including "stealth," "all goods and services," "chutzpah," and (oh yeah) "Google" which he claimed to have been using since 1981.

As Temple notes, PNC is trying to avoid having the phrase "virtual wallet" be declared generic such that their registered trademark can be eliminated, but if they didn't want that to happen, they probably shouldn't have gone with such an already generic and descriptive phrase.

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]]> virtual-wallet,-virtual-wallet http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130217/23462522009 Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:38:11 PDT If You Have A Generic Domain Name, Don't Expect Trademark Protection On It Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100805/18101410519.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100805/18101410519.shtml really a problem if you're a savvy business person, but it's the way things are.

However, as something of "natural" proof of this, just look at how much of a gold rush there was in the early dot com era for "generic" dot com domain names. Everyone involved in those businesses just knew why this was important. They believed that by having those key generic terms, "books.com," "pets.com," and even "sex.com" that you would be one of the first places people would go, even if they didn't know who you, as a company, were. Of course, it actually didn't turn out that way for many players who ended up with those domains. A lot of the early companies who had "great" domains faded pretty quickly. Execution matters more than just a good name.

And, of course, this whole generic business really gets in the way of that backwards trademark view, where having your name be generic is "bad." For example, in a recent lawsuit, AOL learned that its advertising.com domain name isn't really valid as a trademark because of its generic nature. In fact, the court notes that if people are asked about a company, it's perfectly reasonable to describe it as "an advertising dot com." I also like how the court smacked down AOL's claim that without getting a trademark on advertising.com it would take business away from the company:
this is the peril of attempting to build a brand around a generic term.
Exactly. If you want the advantages of building around a generic term, you also have to realize there are some trade-offs, and one is that you don't get to trademark it. However, as we noted when a similar ruling came down last year against hotels.com, it's not clear how much this really matters. It only matters if you overvalue the trademark. The domain itself is still unique and the brand is still unique. So does the trademark really even matter?

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]]> but-does-that-matter? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100805/18101410519 Mon, 8 Jun 2009 23:45:00 PDT Should ICANN Dump The Idea Of Generic Top Level Domains? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2157135146.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2157135146.shtml bizarre policies when it came to new top level domains (TLD) (the things like .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info etc.). For the most part, the whole process seemed like a big money grab, where each new TLD was being introduced not because of any need, but because it would generate extra cash. Take, for example, the creation of the .jobs domain. It's designed to be the place where people can go to find job openings for a company. As if it wasn't easy enough to either go to the site directly and look for the "jobs" link, or to do a quick Google search (though, we must admit to an adolescent snicker, when someone recently pointed out that RIM had amazingly signed up for the unfortunately named rim.jobs).

On the whole, though, there seemed to be no legitimate reason for dribbling out TLDs in this manner. If the world needed more TLDs, why not open the process up entirely, and let people use whatever TLD made the most sense. Last year, it looked like it was making a step in that direction, by announcing plans to offer such generic TLDs, but at the astronomical price of somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000. So, once again, it was all about the money grab, rather than anything useful.

However, with overwhelming opposition to the idea of super high priced generic TLDs, ICANN has delayed the entire project and some are wondering if ICANN should drop the idea entirely. Personally, it still seems like the real plan should be not to do away with generic TLDs entirely, but to just open up the system, so that any TLD can be used, but that you can register for one at the regular domain price, rather than one that's many orders of magnitude higher.

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]]> yes-or-no http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090605/2157135146