Yahoo Removes Registered Trademark (R) From Logo
instagram.com
instagram.com
http://i50.tinypic.com/15oidfb.jpg
A clean, simple, elegant logo, completely ruined by the honking TM and (R) injected by the lawyers. The bizarre presence of two separate legalese-related sigils on a single logo makes it impossible to miss. Also makes it clear who is running the place.
maybe they couldn't for a while?
But even then, what makes a hardware product different from an advertisement or a software? As far as I know, there's no legal text on the bottom of these hardware products either.
*I don't think there's a (tm) symbol there
Why does notice matter? It doesn't excuse infringement if the (R) is missing. However, if you infringe on a trademark, damages are due from the date that you know or should know that the mark is registered. So if you register a mark for your obscure brand of shoe trees or whatever, it makes sense to include the (R) wherever you can.
Now who doesn't have this problem? Apple, for one. Unless you've been living under a tree for 35 years, you know that if you sell computers with an Apple logo on the front, you're infringing on a famous registered trademark.
Yahoo also doesn't have this problem, so who knows why they felt they needed to include the (R). During the original dotcom bubble, some companies were notably overzealous about IP, so they may have gone all in at the time only to revisit it now.
I believe in this case I like it because the ™ slightly reinforces the 3D effect, and because it's a rather bad logo to begin with. I.e. almost any change is an improvement and the small pictograms give it a bit of an "organic" touch.
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/winnt40
In particular: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/startupshutdown/spl...
It wasn't uncommon for Microsoft to have their name mentioned 4 or 5 times on a single screen, alongside copyright symbols, trademarks, and other crap.
For obvious reason it went no-where.
Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.
Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Bic (pens) write to stop people using Bic instead of ballpoint. (Very successfully it seems, that's not a use I'm aware of.)
Hoover try to stop people using hoover as a verb too.
Google used to try to stop people using "google it" to mean "web search it".
They have to try to protect the mark, otherwise there's no point them having it.
These companies trying to stop the use of their name seem crazy to me (unless they are 'complaining' just to get some more press). So much promotion.
This happened (or at least went to court) with Hoover in the UK I think. Hoover had become the generic term for a Vacuum Cleaner and so any company could make and sell products described as Hoovers (or at least it was an open legal question).
This means it is far from crazy to defend a trademark from generic use.
The companies are worried about loss of "uniqueness" (aka. "trademark dilution"), which is a special form of protection that famous and unambiguous trademarks get. Now that the Google trademark is considered unique, you can't start a Gourmet Google Goulash restaurant, even though there is no risk of consumers being confused about who they are dealing with. The law is worried that Google's brand strength might be diluted by their brand managers not having the stage completely to themselves.
I think this whole area of law is fairly recent - Wikipedia says it grew out of anti-cybersquatting efforts in the mid 1990s.
- Aspirin - Escalator - Yo-yo - Zipper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Trademark_er...
Trademarks are not verbs.
Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.
Microsoft really should just have a subscript in the EULA or splash screen with "Microsoft® and the Windows Logo ™ are registered trademarks of Microsoft Inc. 1 Redmond Way, Redmond, WA, etc."
That is what startups should do as well. The best way to estalish your intellectual property is through soft enforcement, just sending out polite letters whenever somebody uses your marks in their own products. If they don't change, then pursuit further, but this works well with Facebook and in a lot of other cases.
Even in relation to operating systems it is generic - think "window manager". Because of this it is very easy to argue that Microsoft should not have been allowed to trademark such a generic term.
If they're too conservative, and legal notices are featured prominently without reason, the price is paid by Microsoft as a whole having mediocre branding, and the legal team is not accountable. But if the trademarks slip away because they've been too liberal, heads will roll.
Thus the incentives are pretty clearly stacked up for the lawyers to insist on protection that minimizes risk to a degree that hurts Microsoft as a whole.
Maybe Microsoft could make the whole logo out of (R) symbols. Then the ones inserted by the lawyers will fit in.
They must think it does something? Or are people just following procedures?
The correct answer to the objection of "but Instagram is better right now" is "I'm going to revitalize this product by using it for my own photos and commentary, even if it sucks right now."
You don't want the CEO of a company giving mindshare to a competitor!
(who used a Thinkpad for perhaps 12-18 months after returning to apple)
So when will Flickr be releasing a working mobile app?
Instagram is much more focused on sharing. Flickr is focused on storage. I'd argue a better competitor to flickr would be facebook's photo app.
Is there some legal reason for placing them up there (requirement to protect the trademark in this way, a CYA, or some other reason), or are they just up there for show?
Owning a federal trademark registration provides a number of advantages, including... the ability to use the federal registration symbol.
Much like the copyright symbol, unnecessary.
That said, in almost all of the cases where a large organisation is using it with a well-known brand, it's more of a CYA than anything else.
EDIT: Changed Yahoo to Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spullara/2904629/in/photostream...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2206188/why-isnt-the-flic...
Also, using valid JSON for in their API would be a nice touch:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157622950514923/
*Note that both of these posts are over two years old, and yet these problems persist even now.
This case is a bit extreme: Instagram has removed most links not only for mobile web browsers, but also for desktop users. That said, the reason for removing it from desktop browsers may also extend to privacy: I personally really like it that it's not easy to find links to my Instagram posts. Privacy through obfuscation, I suppose.
In any case, Instagram's web presence really encourages users to download the app. That's smart, as that's where Facebook is the weakest... so Instagram was able to focus its (very) limited resources in the one place where it could really shine.
For example almost everyone agrees that single letters are pluralized with an apostrophe. It is somewhat less common to prescribe an apostrophe in the case of a number either. When this is not allowed, an exception is sometimes made for pluralizing the number zero so that it is not mistaken for the letter O.
It is fairly common to pluralize period-less abbreviations with apostrophes. The New York Times, for example, follows that standard. It is more common still for abbreviations with periods to take an apostrophe.
So basically, no. You don't get to just say "this is the rule for apostrophes in all cases" because that's not how the written word works. We (or the publication we are writing for) can choose our own editorial style, and screw anyone who doesn't like it (although you should be consistent, of course).
But interestingly enough, this is one situation where there can be a universally correct answer: a trademark. If Yahoo! puts out guidelines for how they would like their trademark pluralized, and they say it should be "Yahoo!s", then that is what everyone should use. If they say it should be "Yahoo!'s", then that's what everyone should use, even if it violates their usual rules.
The New York Times doesn't do a great job of following that standard if indeed they try to. Searching for CDs gives me many more examples of "CDs" than "CD's" -- the only one I saw was a blog post, which is probably copy-edited less strictly than an article in the paper. Similarly, searching for ATMs gives "ATMs" and "A.T.M.'s", but not "ATM's". Others I found: both "GTOs" and "GTO's", "LCDs", "TVs", both "B&Bs" and "B&B's". The phrase "A's and B's", referring to grades, was always written with apostrophes, as was the phrase "P's and Q's".
One of the fun thing of doing these searches is that really old articles are mixed in with the results. Searching for LPs shows that it has been written "LPs" since at least 1955 and also yields this intriguing headline: "DIGITAL COMPACT DISKS - REPLACEMENT FOR LPs?" from 1983.
But, as a grocer would say, tomatoe’s, tomatoe’s.
She said "Yahoo!" They all gave some "Yahoos!"
Just so long as they don't vacillate as Panic(!) at the disco has.
Copywriting rule number one: If you have to use an exclamation point, you need to reword the sentence.
"He's fast, strong and can jump!" vs "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."
Another interesting point is that, for some time now, movie distributors have used the FBI seal without licensing it. But that seal sure makes the video piracy warning look official! http://www.sonnyboo.com/images/tips/FBI.jpg
Ok, excuse the sarcasm. But I don't see what this tells us about Yahoo! or Meyers performance as a CEO. I'd like to hear more about how she's managing Yahoo!, augmenting its products and services, and above all how that this performance translates to better earnings.
One thing I like about Google is they do have regional variants, but they're all pretty much the same.
Yahoo varies WIDELY with all the weird partnership deals they have struck with local companies over the years.
Let me know when she actually change the group strategy or announces new products !
Keep in mind that if Marissa had posted this to Flickr, we wouldn't even be discussing this. The last thing you want from a CEO at Yahoo! is for them to suffer from the head-in-the-sand delusion that Yahoo's services "are" the internet.