Procter and Gamble bids to trademark LOL, WTF and other acronyms

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/24/procter-gamble-bids-to-trademark-lol-wtf-and-other-acronyms

29 6 8 years ago

jamesgagan• 8 years ago

WTF???

olavk2• 8 years ago

I was ready to become enraged, but the article mostly mentions a range of failed attempts by businesses to trademark common phrases. Then it does say Paris Hilton owns the words “that’s hot” - but googling a bit it seems like she successfully sued Hallmark for using a picture of her on greeting card together with the phrase. Reasonable or not, this is a far cry from saying she owns the words in themselves.

CM30• 8 years ago

It's like the Sony Let's Play thing all over again.

Honestly though, I do have to wonder why anyone can trademark common phrases at all. Why not just accept common usage means prior art and they're automatically deemed invalid? Like with the invalidated patents being applied for again thing it makes you wonder who the hell even likes this system.

Honestly, at least one political party should make it a policy to rip up most existing IP laws and rewrite them to be sane again. Just ignore the lobbying, ignore the corporations and go back to step 1.

fish44• 8 years ago

LOL FML Chanel tried to copyright the word “jersey” it’s no coincidence that it’s one of the Chanel island...

olavk2• 8 years ago

It is not possible to copyright a word.

krsdcbl• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a "naming contest" in the early social media days held by German manufacturers of the brand "Pril", a dish soap, where consumers where invited to submit and vote on custom designs for the plastic bottles.

The contest ended up seeing only meme-faces in the top results, and #1 being a flat brown etiquette with the mouse-written slogan "tastes yummy like chicken" [1]

I had always seen it as an example of marketing gone wrong, but reading that article gives me a kind of idiocracy-ish deja-vu ...

[1] https://www.handelskraft.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/pril-...

Procter and Gamble bids to trademark LOL, WTF and other acronyms

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