[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money



Greg Kopff wrote:
John Elliot wrote:
Um... that's just what the legal department says. Show me the advertisement that says: "Google at Yahoo!", "Xerox on your Canon!", etc.
In these cases it's not advertising by the company ... rather they've 
just allowed people (ie not stopped people) to use a trademark of theirs 
as a verb.  What follows is that, legally, they lose the right to the 
trademark.
The brand really doesn't care about that. They care about making money, 
they feel that building "familiarity" and "trust" (deserved or 
undeserved: doesn't matter) is the way to go about doing that.
It seems google stole their "trademark" from another work, anyway [1].

The thing for you to take away from this is that you shouldn't believe what people say, especially not lawyers. Lawyers say what they need to say in order to manipulate an amiable outcome for their client in a discourse of power. They will not elect a description of reality that might undermine their position, regardless of what truth there may be in it.
The marketing department and the legal department will be firmly at odds 
with each other. They *say* they're on the same team, they have the same 
*logo*... but they're in different worlds, and each will do what from 
their perspective is in "the best interests of the company".
Of course, our concern here is "the public interest". The public isn't 
obliged to give a stuff about The Brand (TM), provided our interests are 
being served. The Brand (TM), on the other hand, *is* obliged to 
consider the public's interest.
[1] http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=google

The "Google" spelling is also used in "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, in which one of Deep Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook, leaning anxiously foward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"







-
You are subscribed to the progsoc mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a
message containing "unsubscribe" to progsoc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you are having trouble, ask owner-progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx for help.