Speaking of "whining like a stupid, pathetic 5 year old" . . .
You're going to have to learn to live with the fact that there is something called "trademarks." Trademark rights protect you from a confusingly similar, subsequent use of a mark. Its meant to prevent consumer confusion and is a good thing.
Whether fandom.com has trademark rights or if fandom.tv is confusingly similar is another matter altogether.
Just to be clear, YAHOO was a good trademark because it was "arbitrary" (its in quotes because its a term of art). AMAZON is another example in the internet realm. Your APPLE example, another.
The initial strength of a mark, at its inception, coincides with a spectrum from arbitrary to generic. Arbitrary marks always function as marks and are strong. Generic marks (SHOES for shoes, PEN for pens) never function as a trademark. Within that spectrum, from strongest to weakest there are "fanciful," "suggestive," "descriptive" (I'm sure I forgot one).
FANDOM is a descriptive mark (possibly generic) and could function as a trademark if they can show that it has secondary meaning. That is, if the owners show that FANDOM.COM functions as an indicator of source or sponsorship of the goods and services produced underneath the mark it could be registered as a mark.
I think the USPTO probably said that they haven't demonstrated the required level of secondary meaning.
Or their attorney missed a filing date and it was considered abandoned.
Apple Computer succeeded because it could show that there was no likelihood of confusion between the Apple computers and the Apple records. Both marks were arbitrary within their respective industries and where inherently strong and distinctive.
Actually yes, you could take any commonly used word and put a TLD behing it and bully people into not using it. As long as you could show that people identify it as a source or sponsorship of a good or service (secondary meaning), then you would have a pretty decent case to stop others.
That's why the rush to register domain names has been considered one of the best "cash grab[s in] the world." I'm sure the guy that sold business.com thinks so.
Actually, there are two different trademark concepts here: dilution, and genericism (where a mark becomes generic).
When a mark becomes diluted, the trademark holder loses the ability to stop others from using the mark. So, if Rolls Royce allows, for example, a dog food company to call their food Rolls ROyce Cat Food (assuming that no one would be confused as to source or sponsorship), and then another company did, and so on and so on, the mark would be diluted. It would still function as a trademark, but the owner would only be able to stop someone using the exact mark in the same industry. The power of the mark would be diluted.
A mark becomes generic when it no longer serves to differentiate one mark from another. One of the most famous cases of this is "aspirin." It was original meant as the trademark for the product from Bayer (I believe that was the original vendor). But over time, it lost any "source identifying function." That is, no one realized it was a product originating from somehwere; they thought the trademark was the name of the thing itself.
Here, Fandom.com is merely policing its mark (if it can be called that). One of the things courts look to see is if the mark holder actively tries to stop others from using similar marks in the marketplace. If it looks like the owner doesn't care about the mark, then the court won't care.
Frankly, I wouldn't put to much credence in this cease and desist letter. I'm sure they would love to see Fandom.tv roll over, but there isn't much hope of that under ICANN's UDRP provisions. And because it appears that the couldn't get a Federal trademark registration and possess merely common law rights, a trademark infringement case is pretty weak at best.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how many, but my Rio Volt has upgradeable firmware ...
Speaking of "whining like a stupid, pathetic 5 year old" . . .
You're going to have to learn to live with the fact that there is something called "trademarks." Trademark rights protect you from a confusingly similar, subsequent use of a mark. Its meant to prevent consumer confusion and is a good thing.
Whether fandom.com has trademark rights or if fandom.tv is confusingly similar is another matter altogether.
-Anonymous_Bastard
Actually, its the clients. Clients don't pay the bills of lawyers who do this stuff on their own time. And lawyers don't do it if they don't get paid.
-What He Said
Just to be clear, YAHOO was a good trademark because it was "arbitrary" (its in quotes because its a term of art). AMAZON is another example in the internet realm. Your APPLE example, another.
The initial strength of a mark, at its inception, coincides with a spectrum from arbitrary to generic. Arbitrary marks always function as marks and are strong. Generic marks (SHOES for shoes, PEN for pens) never function as a trademark. Within that spectrum, from strongest to weakest there are "fanciful," "suggestive," "descriptive" (I'm sure I forgot one).
FANDOM is a descriptive mark (possibly generic) and could function as a trademark if they can show that it has secondary meaning. That is, if the owners show that FANDOM.COM functions as an indicator of source or sponsorship of the goods and services produced underneath the mark it could be registered as a mark.
I think the USPTO probably said that they haven't demonstrated the required level of secondary meaning.
Or their attorney missed a filing date and it was considered abandoned.
Apple Computer succeeded because it could show that there was no likelihood of confusion between the Apple computers and the Apple records. Both marks were arbitrary within their respective industries and where inherently strong and distinctive.
-What He Said
Actually yes, you could take any commonly used word and put a TLD behing it and bully people into not using it. As long as you could show that people identify it as a source or sponsorship of a good or service (secondary meaning), then you would have a pretty decent case to stop others.
That's why the rush to register domain names has been considered one of the best "cash grab[s in] the world." I'm sure the guy that sold business.com thinks so.
-What He Said
Actually, there are two different trademark concepts here: dilution, and genericism (where a mark becomes generic).
When a mark becomes diluted, the trademark holder loses the ability to stop others from using the mark. So, if Rolls Royce allows, for example, a dog food company to call their food Rolls ROyce Cat Food (assuming that no one would be confused as to source or sponsorship), and then another company did, and so on and so on, the mark would be diluted. It would still function as a trademark, but the owner would only be able to stop someone using the exact mark in the same industry. The power of the mark would be diluted.
A mark becomes generic when it no longer serves to differentiate one mark from another. One of the most famous cases of this is "aspirin." It was original meant as the trademark for the product from Bayer (I believe that was the original vendor). But over time, it lost any "source identifying function." That is, no one realized it was a product originating from somehwere; they thought the trademark was the name of the thing itself.
Here, Fandom.com is merely policing its mark (if it can be called that). One of the things courts look to see is if the mark holder actively tries to stop others from using similar marks in the marketplace. If it looks like the owner doesn't care about the mark, then the court won't care.
Frankly, I wouldn't put to much credence in this cease and desist letter. I'm sure they would love to see Fandom.tv roll over, but there isn't much hope of that under ICANN's UDRP provisions. And because it appears that the couldn't get a Federal trademark registration and possess merely common law rights, a trademark infringement case is pretty weak at best.
-What He Said