I completely agree - but i think there is another dynamic at work here:
Companies can loose their trademark if the term becomes generic, and one way to defend against that in court is to show a history of defending the mark (I'm not lawyer but that's my simplistic explanation) this is a great article explaining the phenomena around derby pie
If IMAX's attorneys actually think nominative use in an article risks them losing the trademark, they need to fire their attorney. In no way is Ars using the IMAX mark to refer to a generic large screen (its an attributed quote, not an editorial comment) and there's no risk of confusion.
>Companies can loose their trademark if the term becomes generic
This is ridiculous on its face. Its not like some competitor made an IMAXy Projector. This was a quote in a press article. This is a speech issue that has nothing to do with dilution, which is obvious if you bothered to read the article where Mary Ruby assaults ars staff with a weird rant about how VR cant compete with IMAX.
Frankly, the fact that trademark abusing corporations have people repeating their bullshit is scary.
Companies can loose their trademark if the term becomes generic, and one way to defend against that in court is to show a history of defending the mark (I'm not lawyer but that's my simplistic explanation) this is a great article explaining the phenomena around derby pie
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/01/399842082/wha...
My bet is that they are weighing the lesser of two evils (to them) loose their trademark or look like a fool in the press for a few days...