-Laurel Sutton Senior Strategist & Linguist at Catchword Brand Name Development
If I was in charge of naming scientific research vessels, they’d all get names like Boaty McBoatface. This, in case you hadn’t heard, is the leading candidate in a crowdsourced effort to name the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council’s new polar research ship.
-Martha Engel, Attorney
Here’s hoping your 2016 brackets did better than mine last week, but this has been quite a crazy and exciting tournament thus far. As a Marquette fan, the Indiana–Notre Dame–Wisconsin area of the bracket has been quite disheartening. And the buzzer beaters galore this tournament have left many
– Jason Voiovich, Chief Customer Officer, Logic PD
I took my kids to SeaWorld in San Diego.
It must have been six or seven years ago, and the theme park was the highlight of the trip. (LEGOLAND was a close second, but c’mon, SeaWorld has orcas. It was really no contest, even though this was
Life is full of ups and downs. The world of trademarks often tends to mirror life. Yet, for the time being, the USPTO currently recognizes only one brand and mark as living solely on ups:
As it turns out, those three letters form a pretty powerful brand and trademark. Although there may have been
It’s that wonderful time of year again, March Madness! When families, friends, and coworkers all get together to casually gamble and all throw $10 into a pool. When 12’s beat 5’s and mess up your bracket. When you lose one game and are sent packing. The few weeks when “Cinderella” is uttered most throughout the
–Dave Holt, Solicitor & Alex Watt, Partner, Browne Jacobson LLP
In the European Union, Coca-Cola has recently followed in the stumbling footsteps of fellow global super-brand Nestlé, falling at the final hurdle in its attempt to register the three-dimensional shape of its iconic ‘Coke bottle’ in classes 6, 21 and 32. You can read the
We had some great questions from the audience during the Mastering U.S. Trademark Registration Practice seminar in Minneapolis a few weeks ago. During the session on genericness, someone asked about MyPillow, expressing amazement that it could be federally-registered.
Having now seen the MyPillow television advertisement probably a dozen times since then, I’ve finally gotten
– Jason Sprenger – President, Game Changer Communications
Throughout my career, I’ve noticed that there’s a prevailing theory among the masses in my industry, and I’m sure it’s probably true of other professional service industries (law included) as well. People seem to think that working with B2C companies is way more fun and interesting than
Yes and no are at opposite ends of the spectrum. North Pole, South Pole. Night and day. Win, loss. Black, white. Available, unavailable. Protectable, unprotectable. Infringing, non-infringing. They represent a binary proposition, like a traditional light switch with two settings: on and off.
My daughter loves the yes end of the spectrum; no, not
– Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash
Sometimes a company will choose a “Blink” name for its product or service. Blink names are simple, straightforward and usually descriptive of what the product is or does. For example, you don’t have to think a lot about the name Zyliss gave their food chopper: Easy Chop, which pretty much