🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26165@oasys.dt.navy.mil> curt@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Curt Welch)  
writes:

> Trademark.  As far as I know, all you have to do to get a trademark status
> is to use it commercially.  If you what to get it registered (so you can
> put the r in a circle after your trademark, then you have to fill out some
> paperwork.
> 
> And the only protection you get is that other companies in the same business
> can't use the same trademark. (i.e. that can't do something that would make
> thier customers think they were buying your product.)  The name of a T.V.
> show would never be confused with a computer operating system, so there
> is no problem with them using the nextstep name.
> 
> Curt Welch

	This is starting to get off of the c.s.n train, but I'd like to point  
out that the trademark question at issue here is not as simple as Curt makes it  
out to be. Courts, in evaluating claims of trademark infringement also look to  
the likelihood that the public as a whole will assume an affiliation that does  
not exist.  For example, don't think for one minute that just because the name  
of a soda product could not be confused with an television show, that the show  
could call itself "The Coca Cola Show".  People seeing that name would assume  
some affiliation with the Coca Cola soft drink company, and such a use would  
almost certainly be actionable by Coca Cola.  There exists a littany of case  
law in which large companies have enjoined such dissimilar uses of their  
trademarks (Tiffany, Rolex, Rolls Royce, Coke, Disney, etc.)

	 Now it is true that the NeXT trademark is not quite as strong in the  
minds of the consuming public as the CocaCola TM, but NeXT is a high technology  
product, and the show is about high-technology.  It could at least be argued  
that a consumer looking in the TV listings and seeing the name 'nextstep' on a  
TV show might think that the show was somehow affiliated with NeXT. There is  
probably no reason that NeXT would want to go after and enjoin this use, and no  
clear indication that they would win, but they would certainly have a shot.

	matt


-- 
matt stecker			|	This is my NeXT Computer
NeXT Campus Consultant,		|	There are many like it,
UNC School of Law		|	but this one is mine.