When Trademark Protection Gets Ridiculous

An anonymous reader writes: "Sellotape New Zealand Limited have recently sent out a number of letters to New Zealanders who have used the word 'Sellotape' on their websites. Sellotape is a brand of adhesive tape. It appears they are attempting to crack down on the use of their trademark in a colloquial/generic sense out of fear that their Trademark value is being diluted and that they may even lose the rights to the mark under proposed new New Zealand legislation. Many of those who have received these letters and/or heard about it regard this as monumentally stupid. One such group of individuals has gone as far as setting up a web-site dedicated to parodying the situation and informing the New Zealand public what they can do to fight back against these 'Big Business Bullies.'"

Comments

Some of this is the governments fault

[mfos.org]

Unfortunatly some of the fault rests with the government in this case. They really don't leave the company that much of a choice, either sue the people who are using it in a generic way, or lose substantial rights to the mark.

MIPS did the same thing to me

[brejc8]

I made a MIPS compatable CPU and they told me off for it and threatened a lot of legal action.
After pointing out I didnt break any of their IPs they started complaining that I was calling it a MIPS reather than a MIPS microprocessor. Apparently this dilutes their TM.
They didnt want to conseed on the fact that MIPS stands for "Microprocessor without interlocking pipelines".

Re:sellotape == scotch tape?

[Steve Cox]

Sellotape(R) is to the rest of the world what Scotch Tape is to the US.