Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. wrote:
>
> S�ren Kuklau wrote:
> --------------snip------------
>
>>I'm pretty sure that trademark is not valid. There is that trademark
>>with the emoticon (was it ";-)"?) which iirc wasn't valid either. And
>>then there's the "Deutsche Telekom" (German Telecom, our former
>>monopolist telecom company) who tried to trademark both magenta (yes,
>>the color. they use it all over their subsidiaries) and 'T' (big 'T'
>>letter, same reason), and iirc failed too.
>>
>>--
>>Regards,
>>S�ren Kuklau ('Chucker')
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
> I suppose its because all the item you site are in what is called "the
> public Domain" meaning they have existed so long that its not unique
> and therefore can not be Copyrighted or registered. ???
>
doesn't hurt that they are all items that have prior usage - in a
trademark dispute, all you really need to prove is that something was
known and in use prior to a company trademarking it. It's unlikely that
you'll find any "prior art" for Coca-Cola, but the letter "C" was used
extensively before Coca-Cola existed. So a trademark for Coca-Cola would
be defensible, where a trademark on the letter "C" would not be. There
have been green dinosaur pictures around since before computers were
used, so it's highly unlikely that a picture of a green dinosaur alone
would be liable for any sort of trademark infringement, but the EXACT
green dinosaur could be, unless you could prove that same dinosaur
picture predated the trademark and was used before by someone other than
the company that holds the trademark - in which case, they'd lose any case.
Makes sense that Moz would hold off until they have trademarks on their
logos under a proper licence. By using the logos beforehand, they would
be providing "prior artwork" for legitimate use, and invalidating any
trademark they could receive.
Patrick
