.bmp)
.bmp)
One of Minneapolis’ most recent hotel additions, Aloft Hotel, branded as a "hip" hotel and a "vision" of Starwood’s W, apparently features the WXYZ Bar. Or is it XYZ?
I’m not sure, and I’m not sure if Starwood or W have made up their minds yet either (as there appears to be different font, size, and spacing between the W
–Sharon Armstrong, Attorney
The inquiring minds at TechDirt have unearthed a spat between Apple and Woolworths (the supermarket chain in New Zealand and Australia) due to the latter’s adoption of a curly-cue-letter-W-shaped mark, shown below:
Putting aside dilution issues, the central question would appear to be whether confusion is possible, let alone likely, given
This sponsored banner ad is currently appearing in AdAge’s Daily News on-line newsletter:
How many boxes of tissue do you suppose this ad is responsible for selling?
If the answer is none, that is probably fine with Kimberly-Clark since the return on investment for this ad is measured quite differently, I’m sure, given how the
This summer has seen popular icons pass away such as Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett as we have discussed in earlier blog posts. With the recent passing of “Dirty Dancing” star Patrick Swayze last week, I am reminded of his famous saying “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner” :
Two years ago this famous saying was
What does Twitter have in common with Kool-Aid, Mickey Mouse, and Spam? Maybe nothing, at least yet, but I predict that it will soon, unless Twitter retains some talented PR help in a hurry. Why?
The Kool-Aid, Mickey Mouse, and Spam brands all have spawned secondary or alternate and negative non-trademark meanings that have become part of the English language, meanings in each case that lack positive brand associations, to say the least. If Twitter is not careful it will find itself “following” the likes of Kool-Aid, Mickey Mouse, and Spam, and be in the similar undesirable position of tolerating language changes that distract from their brands and favorable brand messages, to be left watching others make generic use of their brand names to communicate a variety of ideas and meanings that are neither flattering nor brand building.
Continue Reading Is Twitter¬Æ “Following” Kool-Aid¬Æ, Mickey Mouse¬Æ, and Spam¬Æ?
Although intellectual property lawyers of the Dr. No variety may not like to admit it — I submit that, not all slippery slopes are created equal. While some slippery slope cautions might prevent a few bumps and bruises in traveling along a particular path (e.g., the one on the left below), I suspect far fewer slippery slope cautions actually prevent life-ending falls from perilous cliffs (e.g., the one on the right below), yet other man-made slippery slopes specifically are designed for fun and enjoyment — not danger — and have generated enormous sales over the years (e.g., WHAM-O’s SLIP’N SLIDE brand products).
So, putting aside Professor Douglas Walton’s teaching that the slippery slope argument is “often treated as a fallacy,” it is worth asking what brand of slippery slope most accurately represents the risk associated with marketers using their brands and trademarks as verbs?
As discussed in Part I of my Just Verb It? series, many marketers love the idea of having their brands embraced as verbs, but many trademark lawyers totally forbid any “brandverbing,” i.e., “mis-using” brands (adjectives) as verbs: “Why? To prevent brand names and trademarks from becoming generic names and part of the public domain for anyone to freely use, even competitors.”
No doubt, genericide — the ultimate fear of using brands as verbs — equals certain trademark death, a horrible result from both marketing and legal perspectives; but, I submit it doesn’t necessarily follow that brandverbing activities automatically result in trademark death or genericide. To be sure, far more than a single act of verbing a trademark or brand must occur before a majority of the relevant consuming public no longer sees the claimed trademark or brand as identifying and distinguishing certain products or services as coming from a single source. Given this, there must be an opportunity to engage in some thoughtful and creative level of brandverbing without committing trademark suicide, right?
Continue Reading Just Verb It? Part III: Testing the “Slippery Slope” of Using Brands as Verbs
–Sharon Armstrong, Attorney
I submit that when a multi-million dollar study finds that one of the “core aromas” of one of the top-selling wine varietals in the world consists of one of the foulest smells known to man AND a winery seizes the day to incorporate said core aroma into a distinctive brand name,