Since the origin of trademark use guidelines, there has been immutable, black and white legal direction against using brand names (and the trademarks that protect them), as nouns or verbs. If you’ve seen more flexible rules, please share.

Yet, marketers have recognized the power verbs have over nouns and adjectives.

Highlighting the 

Samsung appears to be the most recent brand to board the brandverbing bandwagon with its Galaxy Note 4 advertising campaign, asking the critical question: Do You Note?

SamsungDoYouNote

Samsung has federally-registered in the U.S. the trademark GALAXY NOTE for smart phones, mobile phones, and tablet computers — note the absence of a disclaimer of NOTE,

With the upcoming 2012 presidential election, this is the time during our American political cycle where spinning is almost a sport — at least an expected activity. Puns intended, as you’ll see.

Over the last several years, I’ve heard my wife speak about “spinning classes” at a local health club (mind you, not at 

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of participating in a ninety-minute webinar with my good friend, frequent and eloquent guest-blogger on DuetsBlog — Aaron Keller of Capsule — complete with some friendly banter on the following: "Hot Marketing Topics with Trademark and Legal Implications."

Minnesota Continuing Legal Education has generously provided a link where the webinar can be viewed in its entirety, here.

As

We have been following the truncation trend to single-letter branding symbols for some time now.

Visa appears to be heading in this direction with the relatively new V logo:

                                                                            

Based on trademark filings at the USPTO, it appears Visa began using this single-letter V logo by itself back in 2008 with the launch of