AC Question

[tolbiny]

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John Sears wants to open a corner hardward store called "Sears Hardware." No intention to deceive, John is just using his name on his store. The problem is that when people jump to the yellow pages or look up hardware stores, they will sometimes go to John Sears store (intending to go to Sears Roebuck) and end up purchasing there because they would have to otherwise travel across town to go to the other "sears" store and, well, John Sears happens to sell the screwdriver that they needed anyway.

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IMO in this type of situation there has been no harm done to either of the two people in the transaction of buying and selling a screwdriver, and i don't see why (and never really have) Sears gets the exclusive rights to words on a sign.

[tolbiny]

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You can deal with the first issue by only advertizing with outlets that adhere to some standard of copyright protection. Big companies may demand this, and withold advertising revenue unless these conditions are met.

The second, you can refuse to sell your equipemnt at outlets that don't recognize copyright protection.

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Korch brings up two good points, and i would like to make a third about name and brand loyalty. It may be that name and brand loyalty are mostly byproducts of copyright law protecting them and that in a free market less money and attention would be spent on marketing names without that law.