I'm not in agreement with majestatispluralis that we need stronger consumer protection. We do need applied consumer protection which is not always available. As long as trademarks, disregarding their connection to the idenity of a legal entity, are economically treated as property (which they inevitably are, since this is in the nature of the currently defined intellectual property legislation) we will see problems with weird lawsuits, small (or large) enterprises getting badly affect by the religious applications of trademarks by other large (or small) enterprises. I believe there are a few cases where trademark law has also been directed at private individuals through the UDRP in Geneva (related to domain names) where specific domains where people have been offended (there some story about Glenn Beck and subsequent criticism of bypassing US freedom of speech protection). There's some mischievous lawsuit between AdWords vs Google Adwords which I believe is one of those "who goes to court first?" things. AdWords may milk Google for a settlement, or Google may be upset if AdWords would actually be successful given that they might have come to be associated with what is the world's most dominant information brand.
The latter case would actually well be covered by consumer law. There is no need for either AdWords or Google AdWords to be trademark protection order to protect consumers - as end consumers, we are already protected from confusion that we were not aware of that we were exposed to, that is, we would be protected if we unknowingly got a substandard product. With trademark protection, we (as end-consumers) can be help liable despite not being confused in the least and the money involved in breaching property laws when in a lawsuit is larger than if it were merely a case of fooling end-consumers.
In some cases the Piratpartiet is truly paleoconservative, Or simply just behind. Trademarks, dataprotection, trade secrets are all becoming principal parts of the intellectual propety web, and what worse is, they control an enterprise not only externally but also internally. Perhaps this is something for SACO or TCO to bring up?
I've written about trademarks a number of times in the past (here, here, here and here) and while I believe I have justified my position on trademarks well, other people are not insensitive to some of the problems that may arise from strictly applied trademarks.
I'm not in agreement with majestatispluralis that we need stronger consumer protection. We do need applied consumer protection which is not always available. As long as trademarks, disregarding their connection to the idenity of a legal entity, are economically treated as property (which they inevitably are, since this is in the nature of the currently defined intellectual property legislation) we will see problems with weird lawsuits, small (or large) enterprises getting badly affect by the religious applications of trademarks by other large (or small) enterprises. I believe there are a few cases where trademark law has also been directed at private individuals through the UDRP in Geneva (related to domain names) where specific domains where people have been offended (there some story about Glenn Beck and subsequent criticism of bypassing US freedom of speech protection). There's some mischievous lawsuit between AdWords vs Google Adwords which I believe is one of those "who goes to court first?" things. AdWords may milk Google for a settlement, or Google may be upset if AdWords would actually be successful given that they might have come to be associated with what is the world's most dominant information brand.
The latter case would actually well be covered by consumer law. There is no need for either AdWords or Google AdWords to be trademark protection order to protect consumers - as end consumers, we are already protected from confusion that we were not aware of that we were exposed to, that is, we would be protected if we unknowingly got a substandard product. With trademark protection, we (as end-consumers) can be help liable despite not being confused in the least and the money involved in breaching property laws when in a lawsuit is larger than if it were merely a case of fooling end-consumers.
In some cases the Piratpartiet is truly paleoconservative, Or simply just behind. Trademarks, dataprotection, trade secrets are all becoming principal parts of the intellectual propety web, and what worse is, they control an enterprise not only externally but also internally. Perhaps this is something for SACO or TCO to bring up?