What an epic failure by the trademark office. That's as if a company had tried to trademark "Hammer" as a brand name for hammers, and the trademark office just said "Yeah, sure!"
They don’t check trademarks like they (are supposed to) do patents. You want a registration? Here you go. Now someone has to take it to court to see if it stands up.
Anyone can sue anyone else over anything. If those grocery companies actually fought them in court instead of caving in, Apple would get their ass handed to them.
Not a great example. After being found innocent in criminal court of murdering his wife, OJ Simpson was famously sued by her family and lost in civil court.
I used to be mad about this sort of thing too, until I learned that things are incentivized in such a way that encourages companies to at least make a nominal defense of their trademarks in order to maintain an edge in court for actual less-defensible violations of the trademark
Not to forget "Mail" for an email program. Made searching so much easier ... Not.
And never mind the dog named dog (a long time ago, some IEEE journal had a great cartoon where someone painted "house" on their house, "car" on their car, ... you get it. The cartoon illustrated an article about good and bad names for systems.
ever since i read the story about the "Max Headroom" guys about how they picked their name (because it was written at the entrance of every parking garage)
i think the best way of naming a company is to make it something that is said hundreds of times by people every day
"an apple a day" etc... wonder if I can name my comapny "the The company"
