[Foundation-l] Trademarks

Anthony wikimail at inbox.org
Tue Nov 25 20:49:28 UTC 2008


On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
> Anthony writes:
>
> > The fundamental intention of [[trademark dilution]] law is to create a
> > property right.
>
> This isn't an accurate statement about trademark law. It's true that
> trademark law creates certain rights, but to understand trademark law
> as an attempt to create a *property* right is an analytical mistake.
>
>
> --Mike
>

Hopefully you can take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution and fix it, specifically
this paragraph:

"Trademark law is generally focused on the need for consumer
protection<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_protection>.
Consequently, trademark law traditionally concerned itself with situations
where an unauthorized party sold goods that are directly competitive with or
at least related to those sold by the trademark owner. However, in many
jurisdictions the concept of dilution has developed recently to protect
trademarks as a property right, securing the investment the trademark owner
has made in establishing and promoting a strong mark. The concept of
dilution is much newer than the rest of trademark law; only in the mid-1990s
did the United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> enact a
law against trademark dilution, although various states had begun adopting
such laws shortly after World War
II<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II>,
and the idea was floated in academic writing as early as the late 1920s."

However, I've done a bit of research on this, and I haven't found anything
to contradict it, so make sure you cite your sources.

Please note that I wasn't talking here about "trademark law", I was talking
specifically about "trademark dilution law".  These types of laws both share
the term "trademark", but they are actually not all that similar otherwise.


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