It'd be wonderful if those weren't trademarks. What if someone asks my to get them an all-bran cereal, then bring it to their holiday inn, the Hilton Beachside, for breakfast before a conference discussing network solutions, where we pitch CRM technology to window developers who make transparent building panels?
Mightn't I get confused by all those stupid companies who term-squat on otherwise useful parts of our language?
Trademark law pays off well when we allow for names like 'Google'; it's new (not stepping on existing terms or usage) and thus also unique. But names like Network Solutions are actively harmful. They do cause some confusion. In fact, a low-level imperceptible bias is what they're counting on.
Trademark law would lose 92.4% of its complexity (and burden to society) if we simply stopped allowing generic terms or combinations of generic terms.
Mightn't I get confused by all those stupid companies who term-squat on otherwise useful parts of our language?
Trademark law pays off well when we allow for names like 'Google'; it's new (not stepping on existing terms or usage) and thus also unique. But names like Network Solutions are actively harmful. They do cause some confusion. In fact, a low-level imperceptible bias is what they're counting on.
Trademark law would lose 92.4% of its complexity (and burden to society) if we simply stopped allowing generic terms or combinations of generic terms.