There seems to be ongoing fighting over at the [[Certified Financial Planner]] page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Financial_Planner
over whether the page should be festooned with (r) and (tm) symbols everywhere the trademarked title of the article occurs, including as part of the article's title itself.
It is my impression (IANAL) that such usages are not necessary, nor are they standard in English-language writing style, when the usage is of a journalistic or encyclopedic nature rather than as part of marketing materials. After all, Wikipedia has many articles, like [[Coca-Cola]], that are named after trademarks, but don't display the symbols demanded by the lawyers.
At any rate, if such symbols do remain in the article, they ought to be done with proper Unicode characters (technically feasible now that the site is entirely in UTF-8) rather than their ugly ASCII imitations.
On 8/30/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
It is my impression (IANAL) that such usages are not necessary, nor are they standard in English-language writing style, when the usage is of a journalistic or encyclopedic nature rather than as part of marketing materials. After all, Wikipedia has many articles, like [[Coca-Cola]], that are named after trademarks, but don't display the symbols demanded by the lawyers.
As far as I recall, there is no legal requirement to use either symbol. (r) and ™ are used by trademark holders to inform you that they consider the terms trademarks. It is not commonplace to use those symbols when you are NOT claiming trademark status on the terms yourself.
-Matt
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
As far as I recall, there is no legal requirement to use either symbol. (r) and ™ are used by trademark holders to inform you that they consider the terms trademarks. It is not commonplace to use those symbols when you are NOT claiming trademark status on the terms yourself.
Yes, it's up to the person who owns the trademark to spray them around everywhere. If we do it, we're just being chumps.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
As far as I recall, there is no legal requirement to use either symbol. (r) and ™ are used by trademark holders to inform you that they consider the terms trademarks. It is not commonplace to use those symbols when you are NOT claiming trademark status on the terms yourself.
Yes, it's up to the person who owns the trademark to spray them around everywhere. If we do it, we're just being chumps.
Speaking of which, we SHOULD do it with Wikipedia(R)(TM).
[1] It's a registered trademark of the WMF, isn't it?
On 30 Aug 2006, at 21:01, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/30/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
As far as I recall, there is no legal requirement to use either symbol. (r) and ™ are used by trademark holders to inform you that they consider the terms trademarks. It is not commonplace to use those symbols when you are NOT claiming trademark status on the terms yourself.
Yes, it's up to the person who owns the trademark to spray them around everywhere. If we do it, we're just being chumps.
It might be different in English law.
If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
- d.
On 31 Aug 2006, at 10:19, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
I think trying may be enough in English law.
Usually a big document will just say "All trademarks acknowledged" once. Perhaps Wikipedia could say that on a page somewhere.
Stephen Streater wrote:
On 31 Aug 2006, at 10:19, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
I think trying may be enough in English law.
Usually a big document will just say "All trademarks acknowledged" once. Perhaps Wikipedia could say that on a page somewhere.
It should probably be on [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]:
"All trademarks are the property of their respective owners"...
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 31 Aug 2006, at 10:19, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
I think trying may be enough in English law.
Usually a big document will just say "All trademarks acknowledged" once. Perhaps Wikipedia could say that on a page somewhere.
FWIW, there's a couple of images which have text to the extent of:
"This image, and the work it represents, is in the public domain. However, it is covered by trademark laws in some jusrisdictions, and whilst it is free from any copyright restrictions, there may be legal issues with reusing it in certain contexts"
Image trademarks are a bit of an odd case compared to CocaColaTM scattered across the text, but I'm still not entirely sure what to do with them.
David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
We have also traditionally had good success with simply noting, upon first use, the the term is a trademark held by so-and-so. This is a nice compromise because (a) it is encyclopedic information and (b) it usually satisfies them.
When they want us to sprinkle (R) or (TM) everywhere, yeah, well, they can just forget it, that's stupid.
--Jimbo
On 31 Aug 2006, at 13:17, Jimmy Wales wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law. If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
Business: "We demand you cover your article in (R) and (tm)." Wikipedia: "No. Bloody obvious academic fair use, any legal threat would be obviously frivolous and probably sanctionable." Business: "Well, we tried."
We have also traditionally had good success with simply noting, upon first use, the the term is a trademark held by so-and-so. This is a nice compromise because (a) it is encyclopedic information and (b) it usually satisfies them.
When they want us to sprinkle (R) or (TM) everywhere, yeah, well, they can just forget it, that's stupid.
We had a big debate on [[Web 2.0]] about this.
The article makes it clear it is a trademark under the heading "Trademark controversy". I can't see any (r) or (tm).
On 8/31/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
It might be different in English law.
If you don't enforce your trademark here, I think you lose it.
There's nothing in that that requires that others put silly symbols after trademarks. Just that they don't use them to describe other than the trademarked goods or services.
-Matt
I thought that a basic rule of thumb was to use a trademark (r, tm, or p) symbol at the first usage of that word. However, in my experience, it is usually accompanied by a footnote specifying the owner of said trademarks, and, as you have stated, is not typically utilized in encyclopedic materials.
I went back and looked at the history to see what you were talking about (current version doesn't have them). My main comment is that the trademark symbols should have been inserted correctly, using the actual (r) symbol instead of the (R), which is just distracting. The trademark (tm) should have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.
Carl On 8/30/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
There seems to be ongoing fighting over at the [[Certified Financial Planner]] page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Financial_Planner
over whether the page should be festooned with (r) and (tm) symbols everywhere the trademarked title of the article occurs, including as part of the article's title itself.
It is my impression (IANAL) that such usages are not necessary, nor are they standard in English-language writing style, when the usage is of a journalistic or encyclopedic nature rather than as part of marketing materials. After all, Wikipedia has many articles, like [[Coca-Cola]], that are named after trademarks, but don't display the symbols demanded by the lawyers.
At any rate, if such symbols do remain in the article, they ought to be done with proper Unicode characters (technically feasible now that the site is entirely in UTF-8) rather than their ugly ASCII imitations.
-- Dan Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
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On 31/08/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
The trademark (tm) should have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.
Or as the HTML entity ™ .
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 31/08/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
The trademark (tm) should have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.
Or as the HTML entity ™ .
... and similarly for ® .
On 8/30/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
I thought that a basic rule of thumb was to use a trademark (r, tm, or p) symbol at the first usage of that word. However, in my experience, it is usually accompanied by a footnote specifying the owner of said trademarks, and, as you have stated, is not typically utilized in encyclopedic materials.
In my experience it is only done that way in commercial text. This is normally because either:
1. The commercial entity owns the trademark themselves 2. They are licensed by another entity to use those trademarks and thus have to be as careful with them as the owner would (generally contractually obligated, in fact) 3. They are taking great care to not appear as if they are claiming the marks for themselves, which could be lawsuit-fodder.
-Matt