In 1999 I rescued two cats from a local ex-serviceman . I named one Pandora . ( I read a lot ofGreek mythologyback then . ) A couple of years later , PANDORA jewelry became all the madness . Now , every sentence I see a PANDORA commercial message I kick myself for not trademark my little girl ’s name . The two of us could have been swim in khat treats .
Yet , even if I had call back of it , according to two New York University law professor , it probably would have been too recent to cash in . It seems that many of the words we apply every mean solar day are alreadytrademarked , which mean it is difficult for enterpriser to find serious names for their companies .
Take Pandora , for case . Search theU.S. Patent and Trademark Office databaseand you ’d get hold a number of company that already employ " Pandora " in their name , avatarsand Word . There ’s a Pandora Hair Collection , Pandoraradio , and , yes , Pandora ’s Box . Should n’t Zeus own that one ?
The two professors , Barton Beebe and Jeanne C. Fromer , looked at the 6.7 million trademark software lodge at the U.S.Patentand Trademark Office between 2003 and 2016 . They then studied a database of the 100,000 most frequently used password in American English — theCorpus of Contemporary American English . They also reviewed a U.S. Census tilt of the 151,672 most oft pass surnames in the United States .
What they found will knock your socks off , which , by the way is also trademarked . " The information award compelling evidence of substantial word - mark depletion , " they compose in the Feb. 9 , 2018 issue of theHarvard Law Review , " particularly with respect to the sets of potential marks that business prefer most : received English words , short coinage that are pronounceable by English speakers and common American last name . "
For the record , neology is a fancy term for newly coined word or expressions . As best as I can tell , " neologism " is still uncommitted to be trademarked . Though other common lyric have pending registration , include even the parole " the . " Yes , " the " currently has11 dynamic stylemark registrations .
The result of so many trademark is that new business enterprise have to reach their noodle ( yes , variance of " noggin " are already take ) to fare up with nickname that are n’t already claimed , or resort to what ’s anticipate a " parallel adjustment . " That ’s when two companies use the exact same name as long as it wo n’t confuse consumers ( for example , Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines ) .
" give these conditions , newfangled applicant are increasingly resorting to suboptimal marks,“the authors drop a line . " The data designate that applicants are applying less often for stock English words and common surname and more often for complex mark , as appraise by character , syllable and word count . " That could likely explicate why we see more company names likeFlickr , Tumblr and Lyft .
