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Subject:Product names as adjectives? From:Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- MARVIN -dot- ENG -dot- SUN -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:04:31 -0700
J M Forsyth said:
>Fair enough, but consumers/those interested in the state of the language
>are surely entitled to some give-and-take. That is, there are cases of
>corporations registering ordinary phrases and thus taking them out of the
>language. The legality of doing so is to say the least ambiguous, but if,
>e.g., Microsoft choose to trademark the plain english sentence 'Where do
>you want to go today?', people on the other side may feel justified in
>appropriating copyrighted names as useful additions to the common
>vocabulary.
>
This is the reason that the Legal Department at Sun refuses to
recognize Microsoft's attempted trademark of "Windows."
-- Janice
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