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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

Didn't Motorola license Droid from Lucas Arts for the Motorola Droid lineup [1]? And since Google bought Motorola, it is now on Google to protect the trademark?

[1] Although Wikipedia says it was licensed to Verizon: "The brand name Droid is a trademark of Lucasfilm licensed to Verizon Wireless." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid

So Maybe it is Disney or Verizon that should be suing?

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Isn’t a trademark only valid in a single market, eg consumer electronics vs entertainment?

Trademarks are valid in one or more "classes", yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classific...

The general spirit is to protect consumers from confusion by competing companies, which is good.

It only becomes a problem when the hypothetical consumer becomes doormat dumb and half blind. I think that Firefox should have kept the name Phoenix, nobody would get confused by that.

General spirit is to protect company profits.

For example, I'm much better served by Sandisk having a tamper-proof verification codes on their uSD cards that I can lookup on their official website and verify the card being genuine. I don't remember the last time I bought non-genuine Sandisk card from random sellers on Aliexpress after they introduced this. Yet I have a bunch of Samsung ones from China (probably fakes), and half of those are already dead.

Both are trademarked. I wish more manufacturers put more effort to creating verification schemes for end-users, rather than to suing for trademark violations.

It's not mutually exclusive. I prefer to have both anticounterfeit schemes and protection from someone selling "SánDisk" or "Sandúsk" drives trying to get me to buy something different than I think I'm buying. This is especially true in markets where I'm not a very knowledgeable consumer.

"For example, I'm much better served by Sandisk having a tamper-proof verification codes on their uSD cards that I can lookup on their official website and verify the card being genuine."

How so? Once you have the uSD card in hand, they have your money.

Easier to kick them off the platform or contact the police with stronger proof maybe. They also can't say they were fooled in turn because they could have verified on website.

(IANAL)

Yes, Lucasfilm actually owns several trademarks on the word droid, mainly in toys, computer games, and entertainment. Interpreted broadly, these trademarks cover "smart" devices, which are generally used to interact with entertainment media.

See also the legal battle of Apple v Apple[0] (music vs computers)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

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