Is it too late/early-
- to trademark a grimace for the forthcoming TV series 'Ow! My balls!' ?
EU reforms could pave way for smells and noises to be trade-mark protected – expert
Reforms to EU trade mark laws finalised soon could open the way for non-conventional trade marks to be registered, like smells, noises and even music, an expert has said. The European Parliament backed a new directive designed to "approximate" the different national trade mark laws (70-page/538KB PDF), and a new regulation …
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Monday 21st December 2015 13:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trade marking my farts!
I read somewhere that farts are as unique as fingerprints, so it is unlikely that anyone would infringe that particular trademark. Anyway, for it to be a trademark, does it not have to somehow be involved in your "trade"? I.e. if your services to your customers are generally accompanied by said characteristic odor, I guess that would count.
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Monday 21st December 2015 13:51 GMT Teiwaz
Re: Trade marking my farts!
Expected comment - Thank you for not disappointing
What would be the purpose though, unless your farts are particularly pungent in which case they might be valuable as an 'organic' alternative to tear gas (for vegan riots - although they might have a certain amount of immunity)
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Monday 21st December 2015 19:31 GMT VinceH
Re: Trade marking my farts!
"I hereby give notice of a trade mark on my farts."
Well, I already have "breaking wind in lifts" listed as one of my skills on LinkedIn, so I claim prior art. :p
Hmm... can I slap a trade mark on breaking wind in lifts? Or is that likely to infringe on something of Apple's (being that a lift can probably be classed as "a mobile device") ?
Note for pedants: Yes, I am aware of the difference between trade marks and patents. It's a joke, you fool!
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Monday 21st December 2015 20:42 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: What use is this?
A smell is a volatile chemical that has reached your nose. A sound is a wavefront that has reached your ear. Neither is durable, although the means of production might be. Then again, the means (recipe) would be subject to copyright, so there is really no need for this extension.
Are we really going to have a load of lawyers claiming ownership over chunks of the natural world simply because they had the necessary absence of scruples to register the claim first? Would it not be simpler to find the twat who came up with this idea and punch them in the face until our fists bleed?
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Monday 21st December 2015 21:02 GMT Steven Roper
Re: What use is this?
"Would it not be simpler to find the twat who came up with this idea and punch them in the face until our fists bleed?"
Given that there would be a very long queue of people lining up for that privilege I would recommend each person in line be allowed only one punch each, albeit they are allowed to give it their best shot. That way the most possible people get a go before the fucker's head caves in. I want my turn!
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Monday 21st December 2015 12:49 GMT msknight
Hmm... smells like washing powder.
Which one? Ariel or Persil? You need to be specific these days so I know who to pay royalties to.
Errrr....
This is SO not going to end well, particularly as perfumes change over time, so can't easily be stored for reference purposes, unless broken down to components that are re-mixed for every required comparison.
I spent a small time working in a perfumary. How those people ever managed to retain a detailed nose is beyond my technical comprehension. It all smelt like s**t to me.
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Monday 21st December 2015 14:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Is there any point trademarking e.g. taste
When the sods keep changing the recipe anyway (I'm think of chocolate here).
You're presumably thinking of the once great Cadburys, whose Yank owners are now steadily sliding down the slope (one product change at a time) towards the sort of filthy brown ordure marketed by Hershey.
Maybe Hershey could get in quick, and defend their niche by trademarking the taste and smell of dog foulage before Cadbury reach the same texture, smell and taste?
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Monday 21st December 2015 15:25 GMT Old Handle
Re: Is there any point trademarking e.g. taste
If it works like in the US, you won't be able to trademark the taste of a food anyway, nor the smell of a perfume. The trademarked attribute will have to be something unrelated to the product's purpose. For instance there's apparently a brand of sewing thread which is scented like plumeria (some flower) and they were able to trademark that.
Presumably this effectively rules out trademarked tastes entirely, since people wouldn't be tasting too many products that aren't food... maybe they could swing a trademark on the flavor of lip gloss or something, I donno.
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Monday 21st December 2015 13:40 GMT b0llchit
Eggs available, please pay now
My H2S trademark will be available for licensing real soon now. Any left-over eggs are to be deposited in monetary form to me.
Limited offer! Only $0.99 per sniff&wiff.
Unauthorised use of rotten eggs will be met with the full force of civil and criminal law.
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Monday 21st December 2015 14:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Eggs available, please pay now
My H2S trademark will be available for licensing real soon now
The H2S is only a base note in the overall smell. The real quality and depth of a good guff is that combined with mercaptans, plus skatole and indole to produce a strong, rich, well balanced aroma with a good half life and character. I'm not sure what it is, but there's also a rare compound that is sometimes released that stings the throat of the lucky audience, giving a pleasing tangibility to layer on the olfactory experience.
I reckon the global market for a pill able to guarantee the production of those compounds would be vast, but strangely nobody has (to my knowledge) even attempted to bring that product to market. Obviously there's the issue of transit time between swallowing and the warm magic occurring, and that represents a risk when popping one of these "Flower-caps", but maybe the concept could be extended to different pill that quickly and reliably produces utterly foul smelling belches. Red pill, or blue pill, the choice would be yours....
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Monday 21st December 2015 19:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Eggs available, please pay now
I could almost smell, taste even bathe in the verbal description given.
My pleasure, sir! And in response to your proffered pint, it occurs to me that a tasteless solution would be a valuable extra market, to be slipped into the drinks of unsuspecting victims.
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Monday 21st December 2015 14:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Au de Sprout
Once was a member of a local veg box co-op, when one week we received mostly sprouts and cabbage.
I refused to eat those small green globs of evil so thus was up to my beautiful wife (then to-be).
Her solution? Soup. Sprout and cabbage soup.
Took about a month before anyone (apart from me of course) would sit down wind of her.
.
If I trademarked that smell I doubt I'd make any money from it.
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Monday 21st December 2015 22:08 GMT TRT
Re: So if FAST is
Once interviewed someone for a music technician at the college where I worked. Asked this wide boy character about his experience of up to date software packages.
"Oh yeah. I work in a production studio, and we've got all the up to date packages. I can get hold of anything you want... Sibelius, Reason, CuBase, AudioLogic... no cost or anything."
"I see..."
said the interview panel in unison, noting down his answer with the FAST branded pens we had all picked up at the FAST conference the week before.
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Monday 21st December 2015 20:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Only on el Reg
Here is the antidote to all the sprouts and cabbage if anyone's interested
The antidote? The ****ing antidote? Are you mad? Why would we want that? I want a recipe that can guarantee fartological success, and that's considerably upscale of a noisey but characterless lentil-fuelled emanations, or a short lived, weakly sulphurous egg-and-bean derived effluvium.
Ideally we need more research to take the concept forward beyond the current enthusiastic hobbyists. In terms of training and outreach, I'm uncertain whether to go down the academic route and seek City & Guilds accreditation for a national vocational qualification leading eventually to a status of Chartered Farticifer upon completion of both academic training and professional experience under a Master Fartologist (of at least first or second ordure).
The alternative would be to seek IOC approval for the subject to become a demonstration sport at Rio 2016, with a view to joining the full Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020. Imagine the pride of being the first gold medal winner in Tokyo, the adulation of the crowd, the adrenaline rush of climbing the podium, whilst the officials stagger around retching in the brown green miasma.
Obviously we'd need the usual rules banning performance enhancing drugs, and a scheme of testing, but this sort of thing is easily sorted. And the great thing is how inclusive this new sport will be: Couch potatoes and hambeasts will be as welcome a bean poles and supermen. Unlike any other Olympic sport, men and women and the less able would all compete as equals.
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Monday 21st December 2015 15:07 GMT David Pearce
Sounds I can understand, the Windows startup, the classic Nokia ringtone. I can see how this would go too far with "Ferrari exhaust".
Smells are much harder, there must be huge overlaps in the smell of various perfume brands thanks to production tolerances, ingredient variation etc. Does Chanel No5 smell the same as the original 1920 sample?
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Monday 21st December 2015 21:24 GMT Steven Roper
Re: Serious question
"All except Cage's "4:33"."
Actually Cage was very canny with copyrighting that.
From Wikipedia:
The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. (emphasis mine)
In other words, in copyrighting "4:33 ", Cage has effectively copyrighted any and all possible sounds that take less than that time to complete; since it requires no instruments and can be performed anywhere, and the content is the ambient noise of the performance location, it must by definition include any possible noise in all possible performance venues - including all other copyrighted audio works in perpetuity.
I'd love to see the IP lawyers go dog's breakfast on this one. Maybe it would create a legal black hole into which they would all disappear, allowing the sun to come out and flowers to bloom and this world transform into an altogether happier place!
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Monday 21st December 2015 15:18 GMT Missing Semicolon
Notice the Owellian name-change before the function change.
Community trade mark->European trade mark. That's fine, reflects current usage of the term "European".
Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (trade marks and designs)->European Union Intellectual Property Office?
Watch the scope creep!!!
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Monday 21st December 2015 17:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Open the way for trademark abuse
The problem here is that smells and noises are almost always to some extent functional. The consumer wants a product that produces a particular smell or noise, but doesn't care who made it. Unfortunately the trademark owner has a monopoly on products that produce that smell or noise, so there is no free-market competition, so the consumer gets ripped off. If the smell or noise had been copyrighted or patented then the copyright or patent would eventually expire, but trademarks last forever.
I'd say this is a very very bad idea. Which idiots are allowing this to happen?
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Tuesday 22nd December 2015 13:16 GMT Cuddles
Re: Open the way for trademark abuse
"The problem here is that smells and noises are almost always to some extent functional. The consumer wants a product that produces a particular smell or noise, but doesn't care who made it."
An awful lot of people don't seem to understand what trademarks are for, which is what leads to most of the complaining. It has nothing to do with what sounds or smell a product might make, in fact those would be explicitly excluded from being trademarked. A trademark is exactly what it says - a mark representing your trade. They are a mark that identifies the source of a product or service. Intel, for example, currently have a logo consisting of the word "intel" with a line around it, and by trademarking it they ensure that no-one else can use that logo or anything too similar to it. They also have a distinctive jingle that is played in adverts at the same time as the logo is displayed. That jingle is copyright, but with no other protection someone could hypothetically pay the composer for the right to play it and use the same tune to advertise their own product. These new rules would mean Intel could also trademark the jingle and ensure no-one else could use it to compete with Intel's business even if they had the right to play the tune - so you could still use it as a ringtone for example, but not to advertise processors. Note that the Intel jingle is not a noise people expect their PC to make, and Intel could not trademark a whirring fan noise; that may be the noise their products produce, but it's not a mark identifying their trade.
So as far as I can see, this is an entirely sensible piece of legislation. It extends identifying marks from the purely visual to a range of other identifiers that are already in common use but don't currently have the same protection. It will not prevent competition because it's not possible to trademark a product at all - someone else can always make a product that does exactly the same as yours as long as they don't put your logo on it and pretend you made it. And it won't lead to all, or indeed any, smells or sounds suddenly becoming proprietary and unavailable for use by the public - just as Cadbury trademarking the colour purple only applies to a specific shade being used for the specific purpose of selling chocolate, trademarking any smell or sound would only apply to the trade it is relevant to; you could use the Intel jingle to sell hot cross buns and the fact Intel have a trademark for its use with computers is irrelevant (although of course copyright laws would still apply).
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Monday 21st December 2015 20:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
This is the sad reality...
...of a society gone Mad. If you think you need to trademark noises and odors one should be queried on when you lost touch with reality. It's good to see the leaders of the world so focused on important needs of society that will serve us so well while they ignore the trivial issues like poverty, war, digital crime, terrorism, refugees and other trivial challenges in society.
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Monday 21st December 2015 22:52 GMT Pompous Git
Does that mean I can register...
... my girl's pussy?
* clear: Reassuringly free from blemishes
* precise: It never seems to be anything other than what it is
* self-contained: No ancillary equipment required (though the owner is rather fond of some)
* easily accessible: Except when arriving home with a skinful of beer
* intelligible: The signals it emits are quite comprehensible
* durable: No signs of wear and tear as yet
* objective: It's not influenced by my personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice
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Thursday 24th December 2015 04:39 GMT Starlite Lemming
One man's smell...
Whenever I walk past a Subway, I smell melted plastic. I'm not the only person sensitive to whatever chemical I'm smelling, but we are in a small minority.
I can't wait for Subway to trademark the smell of their "bread" ... only to have it challenged in court by a plastics manufacturer claiming it's "new car smell." :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
