Chris Sakkas <sanglor...@gmail.com> writes: >On 12 July 2013 02:33, Karl Fogel wrote: > > Trademarks are rivalrous :-). > >Hmm, good point. I'd say they're rivalrous in some circumstances. >They're non-rivalrous when used to mark origin, contents or producer. >They become rivalrous when they are a brand that depends on >exclusivity. > >So halaal logos are non-rival, but the Louis Vuitton logo is rival.
I originally sent this reply just to Chris, with the note "removed list as I'm not sure they want this part of the thread" But then I thought, what the heck, the thread is already large and anyone who wants to has already done kill-thread on it :-). So: The above is not what "rivalrous" means in this context, I think. Trademarks are always rivalrous, no matter what party is using them nor whether it's for mere "nominative use" or something else. The point of a trademark is in its association with the thing it refers to. So when someone starts using it to refer to something else, its value decreases. Halaal logos are rivalrous too, it's just that the domain in question is not the set of restaurants displaying the logo -- it's the set of other things *to which* the mark could be applied. IOW, I could put a halaal certification group's logo on pork. Now I've diluted the value of that mark, because I've diluted its *meaning*. My identity is not the issue; the referent(s) of the mark is the issue. Thus trademarks are only useful to the extent that they are rivalrous. This is also why they fundamentally differ from copyright, and why "intellectual property" as a category makes less sense the closer one looks. Take the novel "Anna Karennina": the value of the novel is not reduced as the novel is shared (although the value of individual *copies* may go down). This is why the novel itself is non-rivalrous, whereas Tolstoy's attribution as its author is rivalrous, and remains so even though he explicitly disclaimed his copyright on his works. (Attribution and trademark are the same thing; trademarks are just an special, formalized legal structure for attribution.) Best, -K _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@freeculture.org http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
