in reply to (OT) Best Name for Milkbone

Milkbone is a brand of dog biscuit. Probably trademarked.
Mercury is a brand of outboard motor. Trademarked.
Quicksilver is a brand of snow mobiles or snow apparel or something like that, if I'm not mistaken. Probably trademarked.
Element is descriptive. Difficult to trademark.
Quark is a page layout software package used by graphic designers (like Aldus Pagemaker). It's trademarked.

Suggestions: Milkboned. Murkury. Quicksliver. Ielement. Quarker. .....plays on words that probably haven't been used yet. The ideas came from thinking back a couple of days when I was walking in the Garment District of Downtown Los Angeles, and saw Qucci handbags (knockoffs of Gucci).

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Best Name for Milkbone
by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 24, 2003 at 18:58 UTC

    Unless US Trademark law is totally different from European trademark law, you trademark a word for a particular market. E.g. you use the trademark "Mercury" for outboard motors; others may use "Mercury" for something entirely unrelated.

    Of course, if you are a "deep pocket" company, you register all your trademarks for lots of things so you corner not only the market, but half of the economy!

    Another thing you should think of: check if the word you choose has some meaning in another language. It might be perfect in English, but people in Mongolia might laugh their socks off (or worse get really offended)!

    CountZero

    "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

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      ...check if the word you choose has some meaning in another language...

      A check on Google should be helpful in that respect ;-)

      Anecdote Alert:
      In the beginning of the 80ies, there used to be a (Japanese) mini-computer manufacturer called "Facomp". They never really took off in the States, because nobody really knew how to pronounce the name: "Fake 'em"? "F*ck 'em" ?.

      Can't even find them on Google anymore. I guess then they don't exist anymore (at least not under that name ;-)

      Liz

[reply]
      Unless US Trademark law is totally different from European trademark law, you trademark a word for a particular market. E.g. you use the trademark "Mercury" for outboard motors; others may use "Mercury" for something entirely unrelated.

      Yes, but you might find yourself in a position where you have to prove that confusion is unlikely.

      Abigail

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      The Enron folks were going to name their company Enteron. Pity they managed to find out in the very last second that it means "bowel" in Greek... :)

      Makeshifts last the longest.

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        Pity, notwithstanding the name-change, sh*t came out anyhow.

        CountZero

        "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

[reply]
      bite the wax tadpole (google for it)
      it says she can do math, but will she recognize 8 / 0?

      We can only hope they've put in those safeguards.

      Worst case scenario: She succeeds in dividing by zero, and suddenly little Tiphany-Amber's bedroom becomes the center of a howling vortex of nonspace, frying the neighborhood with sparkling discharges of zero-point energy.

      - slashdot
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Re: Best Name for Milkbone
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Aug 25, 2003 at 08:22 UTC
    Suggestions: Milkboned. Murkury. Quicksliver. Ielement. Quarker. .....plays on words that probably haven't been used yet.

    That argument actually won't hold under trademark law. The law is there to prevent confusion - names that are too similar are prohibited as well. You can't put a cola on the market and call it "Koka Kola" for instance, that's just too close to the brand name of that lovely black sugar water.

    Abigail

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Re: Re: Best Name for Milkbone
by batkins (Chaplain) on Aug 24, 2003 at 17:52 UTC
    AFAIK, Mercury, Quicksilver, and Element should be safe. Even though there are companies that use those names, they're just regular old English words. Milkbone differs in that it's a totally fabricated word. Good point about Quark. That's probably even worse than using Milkbone.
    it says she can do math, but will she recognize 8 / 0?

    We can only hope they've put in those safeguards.

    Worst case scenario: She succeeds in dividing by zero, and suddenly little Tiphany-Amber's bedroom becomes the center of a howling vortex of nonspace, frying the neighborhood with sparkling discharges of zero-point energy.

    - slashdot
[reply]
      AFAIK, Mercury, Quicksilver, and Element should be safe. Even though there are companies that use those names, they're just regular old English word

      That has nothing to do with it. Especially considering that Mercury market collaboration and messaging solutions.

      Oracle is a plain English word. Good luck in trying to use it to name any computer application ;-) A registered trade mark is a registered trade mark. English word or not.

      If you're going to be making a commercial product go find a lawyer. If you're not, doing what Liz suggested and find something that doesn't come up with any google results would seem a sensible option.

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