There is a lot of buzz around Google and their attempt to trademark the word glass.
The Huffington Post and The Daily Mail wrote articles on Google having trouble getting their trademark approved which for the most part they were sourcing the Wall Street Journal article who seemed to be the first to talk about the trouble Google was having with their trademark for glass.
Jacob Gersham wrote on the Wall Street Journal:
At least one company is opposing Google’s bid. In December, Border Stylo, LLC, the developer of a browser extension called “Write on Glass,” filed a notice of opposition against Google. Last month, Google struck back, filing a petition to cancel Border Stylo’s trademark. Lawyers for Border Stylo couldn’t be reached for comment.
Google doesn’t necessarily need a federal registration to call its product “Glass” or enforce a trademark on the word, says Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney in Washington, D.C. who doesn’t represent either company. But if Google’s trademark effort falls short, he told Law Blog, it could make it harder for the company to protect the trademark or sue for infringement.
Gerben said that while Google could avoid a trademark fight by just referring to its device as “Google Glass,” a single, simple word has obvious marketing advantages.
“They just want to call it ‘Glass.’ They don’t want to have to call it ‘Google Glass,’” he said.
Megan Garber over at The Atlantic covered a story on the stalled trademark as well, she also took a look at other technology firms and their trademark quests.
Here, with that in mind, is an extremely partial list of tech trademarks both attempted and won.
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Apple has tried to trademark the word ”startup.”
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Apple and Amazon have faced off in court over the use of the term “app store.”
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Amazon has successfully filed for trademarks for the terms “Prime,” “I want one!,” “of note,” “look inside,” and “Earth’s biggest.”
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Facebook has tried to trademark the word ”book.”
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Facebook has successfully trademarked “F,” “Face,” “FB,” and “Wall.” Oh, and also “Facepile.”
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Instagram has tried to stop other apps from using “Insta,” “Gram,” and “IG.”
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Microsoft has trademarked the word “haunt.”
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Microsoft has tried to trademark the term “age of mythology” and the words “natural” and “rare.”
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Samsung has filed for trademarks on the terms “dark screen” and “finger scanner.”
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Skype has trademarked the word “silk.”
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Twitter has trademarked the word “tweet.”
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Zynga has trademarked the term “with friends”—and has sued other companies over their use of it.
Casey Johnston wrote a piece on Ars Technica on the 1928 pages of documentation Google supplied to support their case.
Google responded on March 20 to the examiner’s objections with a 1,928-page document demonstrating the variations of “Glass” trademarks that customers are currently able to distinguish between. Google also submitted the argument that “the sophistication of the purchasers of goods offered under the respective marks weight against finding a likelihood of confusion”—essentially, people who would buy Google Glass are too smart to not know what “Glass” refers to.
To defend against the “merely descriptive” point, Google cites a number of cases where the USPTO has granted trademarks to products that are not made of the materials they reference—for instance, Platinum Micro, Inc., a computer hardware company.
After the arguments, the document’s remaining 1,903 pages consist of various articles that use the terms “Google Glass” and “Glass.”
Needless to say most of the commenters on every story felt that Google stepped over the line. The general consensus being that they have a trademark for Google Glass and that should be sufficient.
There is a .glass extension out there and Mike has already pointed out how some people have regged some names that are just begging for URS or UDRP.
