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Swatch Trademarks "One More Thing..."
AmiMoJo writes: It's the famous line Steve Jobs often used on stage to introduce unexpected Apple gadgets since 1999. Of course he wasn't the only one to utter it — TV detective Columbo was catching out criminals with the phrase way back in the 1970s and '80s too. Now Swiss watchmaker Swatch has acquired a trademark on the phrase "one more thing".
ref: Steve Jobs' grave.
not to be confused with frosty piss, the maker apologized that they did not have time to trademark both.
Nothing like abusing a commonly used phrase for gain instead of using innovation and good will.
Oh, One more thing.
This generally results in the failure of a company, people have great disdain for abuse.
One more thing.
Politicians usually lose offices after this too, so hopefully the cronies were already retiring.
One more thing!
Nah, too easy...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Anyone trying to use this extremely common words combination will have to pay royalties? This is way past ridiculous. It's just like microsoft trying to trademark the word "Windows"...
Why are companies allowed to trademark some exceedingly common words or phrases and then extort others based on that? Sure, such things ensure that there will always be need for lawyers, but what about the rest of the society? It just creates even more work for already-overworked courts, it hurts any entity that can't afford to fight back, it indirectly stifles free speech -- aside from the lawyers, the company, and the hands that the company greases the society at large doesn't seem to benefit from such shenanigans at all, yet no one in position of power is even trying to steer the Titanic away from the ice.
It's like they've never seen Jackie Chan Adventures.
I think I'm going to trademark "What the Fuck?"
I'll be rich!
I'm pretty sure that avoiding the use of "one more thing" won't be all that hard to do. There's always "but wait, there's more!"
I could not read the featured article because after I got a couple paragraphs down in the text, an automatically playing HTML5 video ad with sound that the site would not let me skip until after watching and listening to all 15 seconds of the 15-second ad caused me to reflexively press Ctrl+R. When the page reloaded, a full-window still ad appeared with a mailing list subscription nag on top of it.
Ctrl+W.
I should have squatted on that for a website domain, facebook and twitter. Shit on a crippled penguin!
Between trademarks, patents, and copyright the rich will always have a way to milk more money from others. Now the fucking rich is using it to trademark phrases and soon will use imaginary property laws to censor and take away essential rights from others. The phrase "one more thing" is quite common and anyone using it in a public setting "ads, blogs, speech, etc" can and will be sued by a fucking greedy-arsed corporation. The first step to getting our rights back is to eliminate all imaginary property laws. The fucking rich don't like it? Well then tough shit, they shouldn't be so fucking rich in the first place. Perhaps the next step should be to implement a 100% tax on all assets above a certain line, perhaps 10x poverty level.
So, a trademark is only valid in the area of business in which it is used. It isn't a blanket "nobody can use my catchphrase".
Which means this can pretty much only be used to ... what ... introduce a new watch by a CEO wearing a black turtleneck at the end of a keynote address? It sure as hell can't be used to prevent people from using it in a general sense.
Oh, one more thing ... patents like this make me want to punch right in the nuts and then the face every corporate executive in the world, every MBA, and every lawyer.
One more thing, how you express something isn't "innovation". It's the English language, you can't patent it in broad strokes like that. An expression isn't innovation unless it's truly novel.
One more thing, these kind of trademarks are stupid.
One more thing ... assholes.
They should expect some serious internet mockery if they ever try to enforce this.
Because they'll quickly get the limitations of this trademark shown to them. Trademarking "one more thing" tells me the people giving out trademarks are idiots who do nothing but cash the cheque.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Anyone using this extremely common word combination will be assaulted by Swiss mercenaries and forced to convert all clocks in their possession over to Internet time.
I'll see you at 762 beats.
Jobs clearly made "one more thing" work for Apple. But that was for product announcements and it seemed to be an in-joke by a secretive company that couldn't keep its secrets very well.
Other than that, the expression seems to have more negative connotations than positive ones. It is the sort of thing that people say when they cannot stop talking, or when someone wants to emphasize a piece of bad news. It is the sort of thing that implies excess or redundancy. It is not the thing that many smart companies say unless they carefully engineer it to be an advantage.
I can see a marketing association with a phrase like that really going wrong.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ya know, if we're talking about intellectual property that has bounds (eg Trademarks), can we get the bounds thrown in too?
Eg, Swatch trademarks the phrase "One More Thing..." in Clothing/Apparel, and Timepieces (I didn't look it up, so don't take these categories as truth)...
Swatch: One more thing...
Apple: It just works...
Microsoft: Oh for christ sake again are you serious what the hell I just rebooted 20 minutes ago!
Good people go to bed earlier.
I hope ISIS starts using the phrase incessantly.
Meanwhile Nokia has submitted its application for "Good News Everybody!"
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Can we just trademark all combinations of letters and be done with it?
"One more thing" will just remind readers of Samsung's slogan of the real innovator, Apple. Bad move!
Now Steve Job will never say it again.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It is a shame that people can take common phrases and make it so you have to pay to say it.
One more thing, I doubt anybody anywhere still owns a swatch.
One more thing, I seriously doubt trademarking the phrase "One more thing" will get anybody to buy a swatch.
One more thing, I am pretty sure that anybody that thinks this was a good idea is the same type of person that would actually buy a swatch.
One more thing, If they ever decided to sue someone for using the phrase 'one more thing', immediately after finishing getting back up off the floor from laughing so hard, the judge would say to them "One more thing, you lose."
...Is impossible when it runs afoul the "generic term or phrase" rule. Why did they Swatch get the TM in the first place? Because bureaucracies are inefficient and are historically lax in granting TMs and patents. It's easier to say yes than to challenge an application, and the lazy examiner is likely to simply give a dubious TM app a pass. But the TM in this case will be easily demolished by a simple showing of prior generic usage. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-generic-terms-why-cant-they-be-used-for-trademarks.html
Trademarks ONLY apply in the specific field of business you operate in, and are meaningless outside of that.
True, trademarks that aren't yet famous are limited to a field of use. But in the 1990s, the concept of trademark dilution broadened exclusive rights in famous trademarks to cover even unrelated use.
AFAIK Crayola failed to defend the name and it became synonymous with a wax colored stick rather than a specific product produced by a specific company. Windows is much the same, prior to M$ windows, if you can remember back that far referred to a virtual window on an IBM mainframe, but M$ failed to vigorously defend the term and it became an industry wide term used by all.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If anyone has a trademark on that phrase it was Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo in the TV series of the same name!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...
(To be fair, it's a trope about the topic, not the specific phrase, so it encompasses a number of similar phrases. But do a search of that page on that exact phrase, you'll find a number of hits, not only Columbo.)
I had a manager who would say "the thing is" or "that's the thing is" in every other sentence. I kept track once with a pile of screws, 70+ in under an hour.
Anyone else remember the 1990s Saturday Morning Cartoon version of Jackie Chan, where his uncle would say "one moooooore thing" followed by some dire warning that Jackie or his niece ignored, to their peril?
And also cock-swatch(tm)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've been saying that in print since the Internet was created (which is decades before we let you n00bZ use it).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...could not be reached for comment.
Trademark isn't copyright. Restriction on use is much narrower. This isn't going to pose a problem to anyone except maybe other watchmakers.
...makes Asswatch. Now this I could get into!
is a swatch.
Swatch forgot to trademark "FUCK YOU!"
FUCK YOU!
Yet again more proof that the whole concept of "Intellectual Property" is a steaming pile of bullshit.
No wonder nobody respects copyrights and IP.
This kind of crap puts a bad taste in my mouth for those that do it. Very bad marketing.
Because your life is not cluttered enough ...
Because you can't resist buying stupid shit
Because you need just One More Thing to clutter up your home
Swatch!
Things replaced by my smartphone: Land line, physical books, Game Boy, micro-cassette recorder, calculator, camera, walk-man, PDA, flash cards, timer, alarm clock, flash light, stupid keychain barcode cards, notepad, walkie-talkie, portable DVD player, and ...
One more thing... Swatch
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Just give it time, eventually Apple will buy the trademark for pennies on the dollar when Swatch folds.
With trademarks, don't you have to demonstrate prior usage? Like, if you've never used it, but your competitor has, as in this case, aren't you ineligible to register it? Or am I mistaken?