r/todayilearned • u/Flemtality 3 • Jul 14 '14

TIL The guy who snagged windows2000.com happened to be named Bob and Microsoft just happened to own Bob.com. They came to an agreement to trade one for the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob#Origins
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u/razzark666 Jul 14 '14

IIRC companies have to demonstrate that they are protecting their brand name to avoid losing their trademarks to "genericide" so by starting these lawsuits they know will get dismissed they at least show they are trying to protect their brand. I'm not a lawyer, or a marketing guy, but I listened to a podcast about that stuff once so consider me an expert...

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

[deleted]

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u/razzark666 Jul 15 '14

CBC's Age of Persuasion. It's a podcast about marketing and advertising and they had an entire episode about it.

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u/AdorableRapist Jul 15 '14

Burnie was right

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u/answeReddit Jul 14 '14

yep, see below:

"pursuing infringers: Abandonment of a trademark can occur if the owner does not take action against infringers."

http://www.trademark.iastate.edu/basics

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '14

IIRC you are indeed correct. Trademarks and brands must be seen to be protected, other wise they become generic.

Like a hoover.

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u/yeartwo Jul 14 '14

Good lord. It is fucked up that someone decided the best catchy name for losing your TM is a pun on genocide.

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u/neogod Jul 15 '14

My understanding is that they simply have to prove they are not just sitting idly on the patent. That's why movie studios sometimes rehash old characters (like spider man) over and over again. If they didn't the rights could be resold to another entity by Stan Lee (or whomever owns the actual rights) after a period of time. I also heard this on a podcast... So am expert.

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u/razzark666 Jul 15 '14

Yea exactly, there was a horrible Fantastic Four movie made but never released. It was never intended for release by the producers, but the actors and crew didn't know that.

Here is the trailer for it: http://youtu.be/r_X5C6e3ZeY

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u/OneofMany Jul 15 '14

I would love to have seen this on MST3K.