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Citigroup Sues AT&T For Saying 'Thanks' To Customers (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Citigroup has a trademark on "THANKYOU" and is currently using it to sue ATT for using "Thanks." Ars Technica reports: "Who knew? Banking giant Citigroup has trademarked 'THANKYOU' and is now suing technology giant ATT for how it says thanks to its own loyal customers. This is 'unlawful conduct' amounting to wanton trademark infringement, Citigroup claims in its federal lawsuit." Citigroup doesn't appear to be gracious in its branding: Despite actual knowledge of Citigroup's substantial use of and exclusive rights in the THANKYOU Marks, Citigroup's use of the marks in connection with ATT co-branded credit cards, and Citigroup's concerns regarding ATT's proposed trademarks, ATT launched a customer loyalty program under the trademarks "thanks" and "ATT thanks" on or about June 2, 2016. ATT's use of the "thanks" and "ATT thanks" trademarks is likely to cause consumer confusion and constitutes trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and unfair competition in violation of Citigroup's rights. Citigroup therefore seeks to enjoin ATT's infringing conduct and to recover damages based on the injury ATT's conduct has caused to Citigroup as well as ATT's unjust enrichment. In April, ATT applied to trademark "ATT THANKS." Citigroup wants that trademark to be rejected because it thinks that proposed trademark is "confusingly similar to Citigroup's "THANKYOU Marks," according to its lawsuit.
The dumbest thing I've ever fucking seen. There are no words for the fact that we've gotten so low as to trademark appreciation. Not to mention the fact that these are two companies who, to the best of my knowledge, fuck their customers in the wallet in unconscionable ways with frequency.
Things like this are why people are against overuse of IP laws.
Best fucking CAPTCHA I've ever seen: truthful.
I always wondered why they said "I love you", seemed weird to me.
Seeing stupid bullshit like being able to trademark "Thank you" does explain it all though.
United States of America, land of the lawsuits.
Any government bureaucrat who had ANY involvement, however slight, in approving a trademark for "THANKYOU" should be fired.
In order for a trademark on thank you to lose distinctiveness it would have to actually have some to begin with.
It's "Thanks." I mean fuck man, it's "Thanks." I get what you're saying but it's about one of the most common terms in the English language. This entire thing is beyond fucked up. It makes me want to hate them for their arrogance in claiming the word "Thanks." I already hate Citigroup anyway but I used to hate AT&T more. Now they've moved ahead on the shitty fucking corporation list.
That's spot on. And that's why trivial words like 'thank you' or 'windows' should never be allowed to be used as trademark in the first place.
They do have a point. You know, whenever someone says "thank you" to me, I always naturally assume that they are working for Citigroup. When it turns out they don't work for Citigroup and they were just saying it to be nice, it confuses the hell out of me. Could everyone please stop abusing registered trademarks like that? Thank you.
They do have a point. You know, whenever someone says "thank you" to me, I always naturally assume that they are working for Citigroup. When it turns out they don't work for Citigroup and they were just saying it to be nice, it confuses the hell out of me. Could everyone please stop abusing registered trademarks like that? Thank you.
No, they don't really have a point. Either of the entities involved here.
Terms like "Thank you" and "Thanks" are as common in everyday vernacular as "Hello" or "Hi", and should not be granted legal protections to the point of tying up the legal system in some battle based on utter stupidity.
I've never even heard of the association between Citigroup and "thank you", and I'm willing to bet plenty of English-speaking humans on this planet also don't subscribe or recognize this marketing gimmick. I also have a really hard time believing this causes you confusion. Chances are your mother or father taught you the words and meaning of "thank you" long before some banking conglomerate decided to try and legally abuse it for their brand of marketing brainwash.
I think Captain Kangaroo has the real prior claim, to both "please" AND "thank you".
Sarcasm. look it up. Then you won't look so stupid for stating exactly what the previous post did.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Unfortunately, YouTube is blocked for me here, so I have little idea what the link is about.
But I do think you're overcomplicating things with your alternate universe theory.
Let me offer my own alternate universe theory from Star Trek to explain this world we live in: if you're familiar with the Star Trek universe, you'll know that the TV shows touch on alternate universes several times. Most famous is the "Mirror, Mirror" episode from TOS where a transporter accident causes Kirk to be transported to an alternate universe where Spock has a goatee and the humans are basically evil, and instead of a United Federation of Planets, there's a "Terran Empire" that makes the Klingons and Romulans (in the normal universe) look like saints. This universe was explored further in Enterprise in two great episodes in the last season, where the TOS Enterprise somehow gets pulled into the mirror universe (and back in time too) and evil Captain Archer uses it for his own gain as it's far more powerful than the existing technologies.
The problem with Star Trek in general is that it seems extremely unrealistic (and I don't mean technologies which defy our understanding of physics like warp drive): the people in it are simply too *good*: they're altruistic, they're extremely competent (when do you ever see incompetence on the Enterprise? Compare that to your workplace or our government.), they're not corrupt, they're not greedy, they're only slightly flawed but overall are great people. We viewers like to think to ourselves that this is what the future will be like when we achieve a post-scarcity society and aren't required to work for a living to survive and pay the bills, and learn not to be greedy, racist, etc.
There's a much simpler explanation: Star Trek is actually realistic (about its portrayal of human characters), the catch is, we're in the mirror universe!. The universe where the humans are blatantly evil conquerors who enslave other races and fly around the quadrant destroying and subjugating every civilization we can find: that's us! If we figure out how to build warp-capable starships, that's exactly how we'll act. Those altruistic and competent characters we know and love from TOS and TNG, that's in some other universe where humans are good. We don't live in that universe.
Hopefully, for the sake of intelligent beings across the galaxy, the humans in the good-human universes have figured out how to teleport between universes at will, and have sent agents to our universe to sabotage our efforts to achieve interstellar travel.