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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

That's not how any of this works. Trademarks aren't invalidated by someone not liking how you do business.

There's demand for Crystal Pepsi but you can't go make a new soft drink yourself and call it Crystal Pepsi. If you want to say you are Pepsi, you have to be the Pepsi.

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What if my Crystal Pepsi is just pepsi mixed with crystals or pepsi made into a crystal? Then it's an accurate description of the product?

Pepsi does not want you corrupting their brand by mixing it with Something-Else and calling it Something-Else-Pepsi.

Accurate description is not at all what the legal issue is about.

Trademarks indicate provenance, they don't describe product characteristics.

the provenance is that it's pepsi mixed with crystals therefore crystal pepsi

just like pepsi bottle crate is a crate for bottles of pepsi

ACKSHUALLY, abandonment is a thing with marks, that's why companies spend money to keep them in minimal use to avoid that, or, like Pepsi, lobby to create "famous" marks.

Neither "Pepsi" nor "Notepad++" are abandoned.

Notepad "iteration mark" is probably "merely descriptive" anyway (= And did I say they were? I just said it was a thing when someone acted like they were rights in gross like other IP. But thanks for showing off how smart you are! Always love to meet fellow people on the Internet who studied and practiced trademark law like I'm sure you did.

Pepsi isn't abandoned but Crystal Pepsi was close to having been. Thanks though, I wasn't aware you could still buy Pepsi lol.

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