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Subject:Re: More trademark issues From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 13 Nov 1997 17:10:26 -0600
At 03:33 PM 11/13/97 -0600, you wrote:
>In the midst of this trademark discussion, I just got a weird directive (in
>part) from our former parent company. We were owned by one company, and
>sold to another, but the company that bought us negotiated rights to our
>former parent company's logo for 5 years (for use as a brand name). So we
>use their logo and put a registered trademark symbol behind it whenever we
>use it.
>
>So today I get a call from our former parent company's marketing comm.
>department. They tell me that the colors I use with the logo on our website
>are not "official" and thus cannot be used (the logo should be black and
>red; on our website it's blue and red). Fine, I can buy that. But I was
>also told that everytime I use the name of the company in text, it should
>be capitalized. I've been consciously moving away from this style because
>it's so distracting. Is there some legal basis for this requirement, or is
>it just an arbitrary style? And if it is a style, do I have a
>responsibility to abide by it since they're no longer our parent company?
>
It could be a result of an agreement, perhaps part of the purchase contract.
I'd check with legal about it. People take guidelines and rumor as cosmic
law sometimes.
There's no statutory reason to do this. The only thing the law requires is
that you defend your trademark, making sure that the world knows it's yours.
Otherwise, it's up to you to figure out how to do it. And you don't need to
defend anybody else's trademark at all.
You might let the website critic know that different screens and setups give
different colors and that it's absurd to question the color shadings too
closely when it's only appearing on a monitor.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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