Hacker News Reader

Comment by krispyfi | Hacker News Reader

Pedant time!

Takkyūbin (宅急便), "home speedy service" is a trademark of Kuroneko Yamato. The middle kanji on the logo looks like it has running legs. (Look it up!)

The generic term is takuhaibin (宅配便, "home delivery service").

View on HN

Incidentally, the author of Kiki's Delivery Service mixed the two up and used the trademarked version instead of the generic one. When the anime was being made several years later, someone decided to look into it, and found that they did not actually have permission to use the trademark. But, the owner of the trademark agreed to let them use it, so they didn't have to change the name of the anime adaptation.

Meanwhile, I'm off to write a book about people who google xeroxing kleenex.

> But, the owner of the trademark agreed to let them use it, so they didn't have to change the name of the anime adaptation.

And got free advertising / product placement in the process!

before or after?

Does the black cat also derive from Kuroneko?

You don't strictly need the permission of a trademark holder for their trademark to appear in your creative work. It is generally done, but not required.

It's in the title of the work, though, which may be different than appearing in the work, though. And it's in Japan, where the law may be different from US law.

Depends on the country that you're presenting the creative work. Japan specifically is known to be harsh on trademark enforcement. It's fairly common that unless you enforce your trademark, you have an extremely high chance of losing exclusivity.

I wonder why the prices here (https://www.kuronekoyamato.co.jp/ytc/scn/send/services/takky...) are so specific (not rounded off). Am I right that this is a general trend in Japan?

In general, it's shenanigans with the display of VAT.

In Yamato's case, they make paying cashless a tiny bit cheaper because handling cash is a time sink for their couriers

Yes, that's perfectly normal. It's not like the US where everything is $x.99. Prices can be anything. With the latest inflation, they've been going up, but I'm guessing they just make a calculation for what the price should be based on their costs, whereas in the US they always round up to do the x.99 thing.

Just curious, is it kinda like "Kleenex", where the trademarked term is more popular than the generic?

Yeah pretty much, my wife uses them interchangeably.

now I know why Yamato are allergic to genericized trademarks. See: their insistent usage of ２次元コード(nijigen code) instead of "QR code" in their Japanese materials

Thx for clearing that up. I had assumed I misremembered the kanji.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com