Harvesting Gains from Established Trademarks

A business establishment uses a symbol, a name, or a mark to identify its products. This trademark also distinguishes one’s goods from products manufactured by other firms. In the U. S. A. , such mark is entered in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and called registered trademark. When successfully registered, registrant enjoys exclusive rights for using the symbol or mark for many years. Just like established fruit trees, some of them have become prolific producers while others have less yield, or to the extreme, have become barren.

Orchard owner reaps much gain from the said trees while outsiders have turned their eyes green concocting something to leech gains from the owner. Mimicking a Search Engine By a Search Engine A good instance of this theme is best illustrated with the established search engine Google and the emerging search engine Booble. After confirming the existence of Booble. com, which they described as basically a porn search engine, and realizing that it infringes Google’s symbol, the latter has taken an action.

Google alleges that Booble has violated its mark and that Booble’s use of parody (literary word with comic or ridiculous effect) would make gains from Google’s very popular trademark. Google disputes the assertion otherwise as it is not a permissible parody (Mara, 2004). Harvesting Gains from…4 Google owns the Google trade name and its domain Google. com. The trademark distinguishes its popular and award-winning search engine. Google as an internet search engine has emerged as one of the widely used search engines worldwide. Various

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Google trademark registrations and applications have spawned in different countries. For investing substantial time and money, Google mark has been firmly established giving the popular trademark with peerless value. Its website has special designs with distinct layout, which visitors could easily discern as coming only from Google, no more, no less. For this feature, Google has acquired an exclusive right for this work. Google has expressed its stand on aggressively protecting and safe-guarding its intellectual rights including its trademark service marks that go with research and good services.

Google has asserted that Booble porn website has improperly mimicked the distinctive look and feel of the Google website, “trade dress,” and its logo. With such alleged infringement of Google’s right, it demands to disable Booble and to refrain from using the domain name. Surfacing of Pros and Cons On Google-Booble Fiasco Adding up the pros and cons, one feels sad that a very good company has been taking up this type of fiasco. One user sees no parody on the activity of Booble. com simply because he doesn’t like humor.

After all, it’s not funny duplicating a search engine by Harnessing Gains from…5 another search engine. This observer strongly feels that this is a way of cashing in on Google’s tested marketing prowess. Remarks have it that what Google did is right sending the porn search engine Booble a Cease and Desist email. It’s a fact that Google has spent much time crafting and creating a respectably dressed search engine and all of a sudden, somebody has come and just stains or dirties it.

Some, however, have come to the side of Booble to rescue it, seeing no violation after all. They perceived the incident as funny for the simple reason that Google is a well-hailed search engine. And either there’s no infringement too, since the graphics from the Booble’s parody do not intend to put Google in bad light. Additionally, some references point to the fact that Booble is not an affiliate of Google and supporters suggest to lay off the former.

Some feel that Google will not lose income or customers just due to the parody site Booble. Copyright Protection Basically, copyright protection covers a wider arena. It covers literary works, scientific, or other forms or processes that are expressed in physical forms. Briefly, if the fixed material expressions appear to one’s senses like seeing, feeling, or hearing, these tangible forms can be protected. Some of these forms are printed on papers, tape recorded, or stored in computer hard drive.

Creators of such works have the exclusive right to use or distribute the said works privately or publicly. Harvesting Gains from…6 Some materials, according to U. S. Copyright Office (2007) however, are not protected under the federal copyright protection. The U. S. government copyright office has included some categories like works that have not been recorded. Similarly, titles, names, designs, letterings, and familiar symbols are not eligible for protection. Included in the same category are ideas, methods, concepts, and systems.

Some works that have no original authors, some charts like height and weight, and some common lists are not eligible for protection. In the first place, one remembers a product most probably due to trade marking. This is the very reason why the process of trademarks lives. Just like other producers, Google has the right for self-protection. With the ongoing Google-Booble debacle, the issue points to consumer confusion and the ascertainment that Booble is confusingly similar to Google. And if this is so, will this constitute or denote copyright infringement?

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