[pp.int.general] Fake Rolex

[Valentin Villenave]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:
> Thus, I think it would be useful to change the laws so that brands
> can be used for the former purpose and not for the latter.
> However, I don't have a specific recommendation for how to do this.

I can think of two potential issues with trademark law as it is now
(there certainly are more, IANAL etc.).

The first one is that it allows (and even encourages) companies that
do have a well-established brand name to sell this name and leave
third-party manufacturers sell products that are labeled exactly like
the "real deal". If I were to buy a €200 000 Steinway piano, I
wouldn't be happy if it proved to have been built on some kind of an
assembly line by cheap workers. This is not a good example, since you
usually intensively test such pianos before buying, but you get my
point: just like you can't buy the right to make wine anywhere in the
world and label it "Bordeaux", there should be some control over what
is sold under a brand name, or at least some guaranteed,
publically-available information to protect people from such
deceptions.

The second one is that, since virtually anything can be trademarked,
you frequently see such things as "Elvis™" or "Bob Marley®". The car
they named after Picasso is a good example of a name gone trademarked;
you may also remember this Swiss woman whose first name was Milka, and
who was unfortunate enough to happen to be a chocolatier. Or in
France, these parents named Renaud who named their child Megan, and
were consequently sued by the Renault carmaker because of the car
already named "Mégane"... So, I think that family names and surnames
ought to be considered as general-public-property, and protected from
trademark appropriation.

Regards,
Valentin