That's a rather poor argument as you present no reason justifying when a shortened name cannot be protected by trademark law. What about these Fortune 500 companies?
Tech Data (short for technical data)
Computer Sciences
Waste Management
Genuine Parts
Health Net (short for health network)
Applied Materials
Whole Foods
... and so on? Those are all pretty generic names. Some are short for something else; others are self-descriptive. Which of those should not exist as a trademark and why?
All of them. If you start protecting words in the English language it requires us to expand the language thus diminishing it's usefulness in future. Personally I would say any word that is in a dictionary should not be possible for a trademarked name. Words that are added after the company for instance Skyping as a term for making a VOIP call or Kleenex as a term for tissue should be allowed to keep the name but as soon as it is entered in the dictionary all other companies should be forbidden to use it.
> If you start protecting words in the English language
Trademark law doesn't do this. Trademark law protects the use of certain words or phrases in the context of the goods or products they mark. The Feds won't come knocking on your door for naming your dog Kleenex.
Legally perhaps, but if I say Skype the product Skype comes to mind, that's fine, because their company name became a verb. In the other direction however if I take a word such as "Apple" and name my company that then I gain an advantage that any time anyone who speaks English eats an Apple my company name has the chance to come to mind. This restricts the English language by binding generic words through memory to companies thus diluting their usefulness.
Which dictionary? Who defines it? Who decides when Kleenex or App are to be included? Are words ever removed from that dictionary? What about foreign language dictionaries? What about foreign words transliterations to a different alphabet? What about made-up words that sound like an existing word with different spelling? Acronyms?
Excellent question, it would be wonderful to have a world dictionary of words in usage with standards on how to add or remove words in a democratic way. For now an example would be to pick the 5 most used dictionaries in that language. I agree that it should include all languages, perhaps a database would need to be created of forbidden words that could be easily searched. I certainly haven't worked out all the details, but if it were implemented then these problems could be solved.
These questions are are pretty well answered by trademark law. Most of it boils down to a judge's decision, who, by the way, can decide that a hereforeto novel term has become generic (much as Xerox, Kleenex, and Photoshop are in danger of becoming), hence why you see ridiculous efforts by companies with household names to prevent verbification of their names.
I know, I was challenging the idea that it should not be allowed to trademark words in “the dictionary”. It’s a judge decision, there is no formal list of disallowed words, and my point is that there can’t be one, in the real world.
I wonder if the discussion changes if we use the same argument against HN-beloved companies, like Buffer or Stripe. A company named Stripe Processing that processes credit cards would be safe, as I'm referring to the "stripe" on every credit card, not a specific company.
IIRC, the test for non-trademarkability is not whether it's "generic" but whether it's descriptive. "App Store" perfectly describes what it labels -- it's a store where you can buy apps. "Whole Foods" on the other hand does not describe what it labels -- it's not a set of foods which are whole, it is a store which sells such things. The name "Whole Foods Store" on the other hand, would be non-trademarkable.
