Huh? "Doomscroll" is a neologism. However, trademarks generally have a "scope of protection" to apply to the goods and services that your company is involved with. See:
It seems that you're objecting to "common collactions." Do you mean common words used together? Like "General Electric" or "Master Card" or "Mountain Dew?"
It's also very common for people to file an objection to a Trademark registration. We've had SAP and other companies do it to us. The marks get granted anyway. It's just something Big Company lawyers to do get more billable hours.
The issue is that trademarking a single word like "doom" creates problems for the millions of possible uses for that word.
Trademarks should not be basic units of common language. They shouldn't ever be single words (doom, apple, meta, square, etc), because single words are basic language building blocks. There ought to be a requirement that trademarks are reasonably unique to the company (Doom Inc. Apple Inc, etc). The onus should be on the trademarker to avoid entanglement with typical language use. It's unacceptable for a videogame franchise to encumber the word doom like this.
I believe the comment you're replying to is including "common collactions" for the same reason. It shouldn't be possible to trademark groups of words in common use with established meaning.
I believe Ludwig just means that "Doom" shouldn't have such widespread protection. The fact that Id went after “Maryland Doom Fest” and a podcast titled “Garden of Doom.” seems a bit absurd to me.
> However, trademarks generally have a "scope of protection" to apply to the goods and services that your company is involved with.
It doesn’t matter, the broadness of similar words and expressions is simply too big.
> Do you mean common words used together?
Words that are commonly used together.
>"General Electric" or "Master Card" or "Mountain Dew?"
As far as I know none of them are common collocations.
> It's just something Big Company lawyers to do get more billable hours.
Yeah, so it would be good to reduce the potential overlap of copyrights. Also, it is ridiculous to live in a world where some companies hold rights to use everyday expressions and ban other companies from using them.
"As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business."
As long as the band Doomscroll doesn't make their logo look like Id's DOOM logo, and as long as they are very different Id doesn't own DOOM everywhere...
But it's not just about the word "Doom", because the band doesn't want to name themselves that. "Doom scrolling" is a phrase that is already well known, in general use, and has extremely little to do with how the video game uses it.
For example, Id would have very little legal argument if the band (or heck, even a company in a closely related industry) wanted to name themselves "Doomsday". Id's trademark doesn't cover all syllables that sound like Doom.
sure, your point supports mine. DOOM (tm) is different than Doom scrolling.
Again, if the band Doom Scroll's logo was styled similarly enough to the DOOM(tm) word mark, then there could be a case of trademark infringement because the point of a trademark is to protect the consumer so that you know that the brand you are buying from is actually the people you expect. It often doesn't feel that way because companies get overzealous and those cases are the ones we read about. Like the above.
I mean, sure, if the band copies the game in, say, a video, Id would have a separate case, but that's completely independent of the name. Just like with your Lepin example, Lego isn't going after them for their name, they're suing because the box and product design look exactly like a Lego box (WTF is "STAR WNRS" even supposed to mean?).
Looking at just the name, Id might have a better case if the name was "DOOM Band" or something like that. But Doomscroll is taken from a word that doesn't even evoke the video game or even have anything to do with the same concept of "doom" that the game evokes.
"As revealed on 5 February 2007, Apple Inc. and Apple Corps reached a settlement of their trademark dispute under which Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to "Apple" and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use. The settlement ends the ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies, with each party bearing its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue using its name and logos on iTunes. The settlement includes terms that are confidential, although newspaper accounts at the time stated that Apple Computer was buying out Apple Corps' trademark rights for a total of $500 million."
This is very interesting,does this mean if you find plentiful examples of acme corp not defending their trademarks before than this could be used as a defense today? Fascinating
Is the issue that he wanted to name his band Doomscroll or was the trademark attempt the problem? Plenty of metal bands don’t trademark their names. I just did a handful of searches against popular bands using some of my Spotify suggestions and found only a handful of matches. I bet he could have flown under the radar for a while until he got their attention, if ever. (This isn’t an attempt to excuse their behavior, it’s just an observation.)
I’ve been active in my segment of the metal world for some time and I’ve always had the impression that this isn’t something most bands do, especially when they don’t have an actual brand to protect! I’ve certainly never done it, never been advised to do it, never had a discussion with anyone else about it.
Because why should they be able to trademark any word combination of "<Some word>Doom<OtherWord>" ? How would this make the world a better place for others if companies could claim any word that somehow contains or resembles their trademarks as their own?
I mean it’s not their trademark to enforce. Is just having “Doom” in part of your name enough to confuse people with the game? I think not, especially because this isn’t even a video game.
Basically, they just don't want their brand Doom to be associated with the band "progressive thrash metal" music.
It's not the first time this happens and it does make sense. In another occurence about a podcast named Garden of Doom, they found an agreement.
> Jeff, who tried to trademark Garden of Doom, his podcast, says he came to an agreement with the lawyers representing Id Software; he says he just can’t make a movie or video game called Garden of Doom.
> Basically, they just don't want their brand Doom to be associated with the band "progressive thrash metal" music.
> It's not the first time this happens and it does make sense. In another occurence about a podcast named Garden of Doom, they found an agreement.
How does this make sense? Why in the world would they have any say as to the use of the term "doom" in another market? The fact that there is precedence is more evidence that id/bethesda has a large legal department and isn't afraid to swing it around. If someone had the will (and means) to stand up to them, I highly doubt any judgement would come down saying that consumers confuse video games and heavy metal bands.
Most likely this is not the decision of any member of the doom development team or anyone who works on actual games at Id software. It’s the work of some corporate lawyer at their parent company (Zenimax media) just making a routine filing for legal reasons. Corporate America is ridiculously litigious.
It reminds me how Paris Hilton trademarked the words “that’s hot”. Like she was the first person to say that. What a ridiculous world we have some times.
> from PIE *roup-tro-, from root *reup- "to snatch"
This would make it a cognate of rape, by the way.
But being traceable to Proto-Indo-European doesn't tell you anything about the age of the English word. That is a loan from Hindi, and only dates back to the British Raj.
Well it's not exact, it's the middle english spelling, but the "Doomsday Book"[1], aka "Domesday Book" comes from 1086, so that might predate Id by a bit.
