Re: Midgard

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:15:19 +0000

>>The above exchange has me wondering what's to stop someone from starting up
a sport apparel business and calling it Nike?
Anyone in the know? Gladly accepting educated guesses even.<<

The name "Nike" is a registered trademark and has probably been registered in
every country which offers registration.

In order to further protect their investment, Nike will have copyrighted things
like the Nike "tick" symbol.

However, even Nike and the ilk are not immune to problems.  For instance, a
company could easily copy the design of a Nike shoe, called their shoes
"Shrike", and have a similar, but not quite the same "tick" logo.

In this instance, Nike *could* attempt to say that the other company were
trading on their copyrighted trademarks by making very similar marks.  This,
however, would be expensive and difficult to prove, and even if they did, the
company doing it may be manufacturing in a country where trademark laws are
different, or non-existant.

Nike would then have to pursue individual distributors, sueing them for selling
infringing shoes in countries where their trademarks were respected.  This is
an even more difficult legal position to pursue.

Most often, the big companies just dont even try.  Which is why most brand
names have "knock off" versions.  Of course, there's no reason to assume that a
"knock off" would not be as good or better than the original.  Traditionally,
in the clothing industry, knock offs are done 'on the cheap' but there are
other industries where this is not the case.

Steve T.

References

Re: Midgard
Hugh Bayer <hugh@bigspider.net>
Tue, 24 Feb 2004 14:29:45 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Midgard
Hugh Bayer <hugh@bigspider.net>
Tue, 24 Feb 2004 14:29:45 +0000