
Santa Cruz cafe with CAT in name hit with cease and desist from Caterpillar - mykowebhn
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/cat-and-cloud-santa-cruz-cease-and-desist-13899034.php
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klingonopera
The official statement from Caterpillar regarding the issue tells us, that
it's because of the the Cafe wanting to sell apparel, too, under their name
that is the problem.

It's not even mentioned in the article until after Caterpillar's statement and
then only as a side-note:

    
    
      He says not being able to sell apparel for extra income will have an impact on both employees and the business.
    

Because of this, the article seems biased to me.

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wvenable
You have 2 companies in different industries (Coffee / Industrial Equipment)
both trying to sell clothing containing the common English word "Cat".

"Cat" should not even be trademarkable on it's own.

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klingonopera
I absolutely agree. In some countries, those kind of trademarks don't fly,
precisely because of common word usage (e.g. here in Germany). OTOH, in the
USA, if a term becomes "genericized" it enters public domain[1], something
that couldn't happen here, so that also has its perks...

Gawd, how I would love to see Apple lose their trademark...

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark)

