> I can't find the email now, but someone mentioned that trademarking
fusebox
> would upset a lot of electricians. A friend just pointed out that they
> probably can't actually trademark "fusebox" as its in the English
> dictionary.
Just to confirm on that. From what I was taught during my Computer Law
courses (bear in mind this is UK law but should be fairly similar), a word
which is used freely in the English language (and from that I would expect
any language) cannot be trademarked itself, that applies to words in the
Oxford English Dictionary, geographical names and common surnames. Scarily
enough I wouldn't even be able to Trademark my own surname, 'Tazewell', even
thought theres only about 50 of us in the UK, but then it does turn out that
one of my ancestors buggered off to the US and only went and named several
counties and cities after him/herself (ask Fred)!
So back on topic, to clear up something thats probably been confusing a few
people, which is the fact that if you search for trademark 'Fusebox' you'll
find 5 or six registered in the US alone... the reason for this (unless
something bizarre is going on) is that the trademark applies to a specific
way the word is presented. For instance, IBM own the trademark to thier font
set that makes up the logo. So lets say for the sake of argument that one of
these companies has the word 'Fusebox' in a yellow with an undeline and a
swirly x or something, that's trademarke-able (is that a word?) because its
a look and feel. If somebody copied that design or mimicked it (like if
somebody had a logo: 'MBI' in the same style as the IBM logo) then that's
grounds for fisticuffs.
Of course the other side of the coin is the fact that people do get away
with trademarking things that probably shouldn't be, but who's going to try
to sue giant corporations? Incidentally, just to break the flow of this and
inject some humour, McDonald's owns hundreds of trademarks, one of which is
'twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun'
(Ref : http://www.mcdonalds.com/legal/index.html).
So basically what I'm trying to say is this: This Fusebox.com company cannot
own the word Fusebox (I feel like a hippy, hey man, you can't like 'own' a
tree!), otherwise they would be able to sue thousands of businesses around
the world for not sticking a TM symbol in a house re-wiring manual one
hundred times.
I honestly think this company is testing the water. They probably know
they've got no chance bu reckon that if they threaten, they might get what
they want by fluke. It would cost them more than its worth to take this to
court, but if they actually do decide to do that, all you have to do is try
to figure out how much it'll cost them to do that, and offer them the domain
name for a couple of hundred dollars less. That way you make a stack of
money that you can put towards creating a slightly different logo! ;o)
My 2 pence (sterling).
Taz
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