by James Mahoney, Creative director/writer at Razor’s Edge Communications

Okay, so I’ve read a lot of whining and agita about how marketers continually drive trademark attorneys to distraction with un-trademarkable names. And how advertisers drive those same attorneys to that same distraction with potential trademark infringements.

It’s time to let you in on a dirty little secret: we don’t care about trademark stuff. At least not a lot of the time.

Now before you break out the smelling salts, or the torts (aren’t they little tasty cakes, by the way?) or something to stop your palpitating hearts, let me explain a little further.

For big stuff, like our own trademarks or ones we think will really get us into trouble if we violate, then we do pay attention and we do care. Ditto for new things we come up with that we think will have some durability. That’s a key distinction here, folks: things we think will have some durability. Relatively speaking, there aren’t many of them—product names, for example, deserve attention.

For everything else we do, we pretty much know that the Smithsonian isn’t going to be calling us to enshrine the original. We’re also pretty sure that most of the stuff we come up with will live slightly longer than a tsetse fly only if we’re lucky.

That’s why we’re so cavalier about trademarks. Other than observing the big-picture rules (most of the time), we hit the threshold of diminishing return on trademark-related effort very quickly. It’s just not that valuable a use of our time.Continue Reading Why Marketers Don’t Give Two Hoots about Trademark Concerns‚Ñ¢