[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The problem is that the U.S. Patent office is filled with IDIOTS!That's not true.
It is illegal to have a trademark on visa, amazon, etc.... WHY?
They must be terms NOT in common use!
The types of trademarks spans a spectrum from those which may not be protected, through those which are protected in a limited way, to those which are very strongly protected: generic, descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary and fanciful, and coined.
Common words can be protected as a mark if they are used in an arbitrary and fanciful way ("Falcon" for a car instead of for a bird), and often if used in a suggestive way ("Rent-a-Wreck"). Thay may even be protected if used in a descriptive way if that use is both well-known as belonging to the vendor and fits one of the other more protected categories in the specific usage (Microsoft Windows).
TUCOWS can be trademarked.
But so could "Two Cows" had they chosen to go that way.
If I make school desks and call my company "Train Station," that would undoubtedly be protectable because of the pun on "train."Coke, pepsi, xerox, barnes and nobel, intel... Can ALL be legally trademarked. Visa, The train station, amazon, visa, CAN'T!
"Amazon" is protectable when referring to something other than a river or a woman warrior.
"Visa" is protectable when used as a suggestion -- your "visa" to enter a store and shop.
