[Wikipedia-l] larousse.wikipedia.org?

Wed May 21 15:33:15 UTC 2003

Sean Barrett sean at epoptic.com said:
>
> On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called
> champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom
> absolute.

We are not talking about international trademark issues here, Larousse has
registered their mark in the United States (see previous post) and is using
it in the United States for English encyclopedia publications.

Regarding the use of the word champagne in the United States (excuse me
but I am Canadian) that is because the word champagne is not recognized as
being a trademark in the United States, it is considered to have a regular
meaning in the dictionary.

This comparison is thus inappropriate because there is no word "larousse" in
American English dictionaries. Words like macintosh (a type of apple), and
champagne (in the US) are words that have regular meaning and cannot be
trademarked, even IF they can be trademarked for a fanciful use it is
limited
to the product that they are marking until the TM becomes so well known
as to take on a secondary meaning, or it becomes so widespread that it
becomes the same as the product it marks such as in singer,
which was once a word that meant sewing machine (but no more) or
xerox copy, which many people still use when they mean photocopy.
Campagne is a trademark (and even an origin of appellation mark) that is
recognized in many countires. It is one of the reasons that these products
need to be relabeled in these countries as "sparkling wines".

Larousse does not appear to fit into the category of champagne, macintosh,
xerox or
any other exceptions. The only exception would be if it were not used,
or that it was being used in a different class than it was registered.
Wikipedia
is an encyclopedia, it cannot use larousse, a trademark registered in the US
to be used for enclyclopedias in the US. Using it as a mark to allow people
to
recognize Wikipedia under trademark law (with all the previous caveats added
here
by reference) appears to be infringement and may create  confusion between
Wikipedia
and Larousse. Using it as a subdomain name, in my opinion does not protect
it from confusion, it as if Pepsi had a web site called
www.coca-cola.pepsi.com. I
doubt that Coca-Cola would tolerate such an infringement.

I agree with Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) regarding the fact
pattern as presented -- use of a trademarked encyclopedia name would
likely be considered infringement and I doubt that if the TM owner found
out about it that they would tolerate it. At this point the infringement is
probably de minimus and would only lead to nominal damages ($1), but if it
started popping up in search engines I am sure Wikipedia would hear from
Larousse's US trademark representatives who would be probably more than
happy if Wikipedia agrees to cease and desist using such a mark.

Alex756