Facebook is trying to register BOOK as trademark in Europe
Whenever these trademark stories come up, everyone seems to get angry without trying to bother to understand how trademarks work. They think that they're like copyrights, that trademarks require originality or disallow all forms of copying or something like that. I'm generally in favour of trademarks and I don't think trademarking common words is as problematic as most people think.<p>When some word is trademarked, it doesn't mean nobody else is allowed to say that word. I can write all day and all night about windows, apples, and lifts without having to get lawyers in my face about it. And if the lawyers do come, they might just request that I acknowledge the trademarks that I was using in a way that could confuse consumers.<p>You don't need to defend everyone else's trademarks on your own. If you want to generically say to "google" as a verb for any kind of search, go right ahead. It's Google's job to defend that trademark, not yours, and I think they may well lose that fight some day.<p>Trademarks allow common, dictionary words. There's no requirement for a trademark to be original or creative. All it has to be is distinctive. I can call software "Windows" and I can call a music producer "Apple". Generic words are usually only disallowed as trademarks when they are used to generically describe the thing under commerce. Facebook couldn't become a bookseller with the trademark "book", for example. (Little known fact, though, "facebook" itself <i>was</i> a common word, referring to college-provided printed books with fellow classmates' photos on them. I assume since no one is making those anymore, or because Facebook never produced printed facebooks, they now can elude any accusations of genericism.)<p>The test for trademark infringement is, are you using the trademark in a way that a reasonable consumer could be confused that you're selling the same thing as what someone else has under the same trademark? I don't think anyone has been referring to all social networking sites as "books", thereby invalidating the claim that Facebook has a valid trademark on "book".<p>Please, try to understand trademarks. One of my pet peeves with people who lump them under "intellectual property" is that they think that trademarks are somewhat similar to copyright or patents, but these are all very different laws with different purposes, histories, and ways of being defended and infringed. It doesn't all just mean "reproduction is disallowed".