Incidentally, there's a fiberglass insulation company that recently
trademarked a particular shade of the color pink (no, really). Good thing
"Fusebox - Methodology and Techniques" didn't have a pink cover, too...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Tazewell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 3:42 AM
> To: Fusebox
> Subject: Re: Fusebox.org BAD NEWS.... READ THIS
>
>
>
> > 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
> 'twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonases
> ameseedbun'
> (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
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://im.yahoo.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------
> To Unsubscribe visit
> http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=list
s/fusebox or send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
'unsubscribe' in the body.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Unsubscribe visit
http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/fusebox or send a
message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with 'unsubscribe' in the body.
