Monday, September 21, 2009
Trademark law prohibits the use of a mark that is identical or similar to prior trademarks in the class or classes in question. There is, however, one exception: “diluted”marks. These are words that have been used by so many marks that the law makers finally decided that they no longer belong to anyone. What is the benefit? Simply to be able to turn to names that, while not very differentiating, are not liable to draw future lawsuits [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
One of our clients, for a name search that required a dot-com, was concerned that our dot-com filter might eliminate a number of good potential names that are taken in dot-com but used only for domain parking. Indeed, most are for sale, generally for relatively low sums. We like challenges at Quensis, especially Guy who, in a few weeks, succeeded in building a database of more than 17million parked sites [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
The latest news in domain names is most notably ICANN’s June opening of a new type of extension: dot-somethings. From now on, traditional generic extensions (.com, .net, .biz, .org…) and geographic extensions (dot-country codes) will live along side something.hotel, something.newyork [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
The macaron is a Paris specialty. This little round pastry, crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, received its title of nobility thanks to Pierre Desfontaines, grandson of Ladurée, to whom we owe the most famous salon de thé in Paris. Those who have visited Quensis are bound to know Ladurée: we are neighbors and regularly pay homage to their macarons. Today’s big news is that Pierre Hermé, the “Picasso of Pastry” (Vogue Magazine), just opened a shop on Rue Cambon just 50 yards from us [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
On the necessity of serious prior trademark research before registering and using a trademark. There are numerous obstacles to the registration and free use of a trademark, the first of which is prior trademarks. Add to that company names, trade names, some geographical names, domain names orweb sites, and copyrights [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
This tool, specially designed by Quensis, enables you to imbue your brands with the local color of your choice. This is a recipe for success when going global, tomarket your products or services with brand names that are likely to work in countries that have significant cultural or linguistic differences. It is as straightforward as a recipe from your favorite chef [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
Pharmaceuticals and drugs fall into Class 5, one of the largest in terms of registered trademarks – it is among the top 10 fullest classes. Which is why it is so difficult to find names available in this class, especially since in addition to the usual constraints of trademark law (more than 1 phoneme and 1 grapheme difference), come those of national or international regulating authorities [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
Speculation, one of the primary negative connotations associated with domain names, can take different forms. Let’s take a look at the most common terms to get a better handle the subject: Typosquatting: Hijacking the URLs of high traffic domains, to take advantage of when Web users type-in generic common nouns or typos directly into their browser’s address bar [...]
Monday, September 21, 2009
Who would have imagined that toponyms would be a prime source for creating brand names? Strictly speaking, a toponym is a place name. Quensis has collected more than 1,700,000 different names in its databases, from 215 countries around the world: from the United States to Japan, by way of Kazakhstan, Kiribati and Zimbabwe [...]
Friday, September 11, 2009
The USPTO (the American trademark office) system for protection differs quite appreciably from the practice in so-called Roman law. If we start with the European example, a trademark must be exploited within five years from the date its registration is published [...]
