Wikipedia is great, and its design allows for flexibility and rapid development of articles. It's fun for a lot of things, but anything that requires authority or critical rigor, such as court cases or research papers, should steer the hell away.
Not necessaily true. For trademark applications, and some other areas of intellectual property law such as passing off, what generally carries the case is the perception of the general public. Tending as it does (on the whole) towards a majority view, Wikipedia would be an ideal source of evidence for this, though it may not be sufficient alone.
As others have pointed out, what the registrar was objecting to was not the source, but the fact that it is not the right type of evidence. To clarify: to support a trademark application, you must provide evidence of the mark being used as a trademark, i.e. by a business in the course of trade. The Wikipedia article does not provide this, though I imagine several examples exist.
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Wikipedia is great, and its design allows for flexibility and rapid development of articles. It's fun for a lot of things, but anything that requires authority or critical rigor, such as court cases or research papers, should steer the hell away.
:)
Not necessaily true. For trademark applications, and some other areas of intellectual property law such as passing off, what generally carries the case is the perception of the general public. Tending as it does (on the whole) towards a majority view, Wikipedia would be an ideal source of evidence for this, though it may not be sufficient alone.
As others have pointed out, what the registrar was objecting to was not the source, but the fact that it is not the right type of evidence. To clarify: to support a trademark application, you must provide evidence of the mark being used as a trademark, i.e. by a business in the course of trade. The Wikipedia article does not provide this, though I imagine several examples exist.
Methinks Linus needs a better lawyer.
Btw, IAAL