11.18.07
Posted in Name Origins, Trademarks at 8:29 am by Athol
This week I am working on a beer naming project, which is rather amusing because for weeks I have been thinking of putting up this posting about the Bass Ale name.
Have you ever sat in a bar and looked at the big red triangle in the Bass sign, and noticed that it says Trademark across it? They are a very special case in trademark law, as Bass is the first registered trademark ever issued anywhere in the world.
Yes, the British beat the USA to get their system going by a few months. And they selected Bass to be the first trademark. After all, what could be more British than a pint of ale?
So Bass has a name and trademark distinction no other beer will ever have. Of course, today it is a registered trademark around the world - and you do see the magic ® in the bottom right corner.
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11.08.07
Posted in Great Names at 7:39 pm by Athol
The dictionary defines Android as a robot with a human appearance. Isn’t it just the old word for Googlelite? And therefore very suitable for Google’s phone operating system development platform? So the much rumored “gphone” was just that - a rumor. But wait, the trademark filing is for hardware and software. And it seems like even their lawyers operate in the very minimalist interface world that has been Google’s signature all along. I doubt I have ever seen any other lawyer file a trademark application in category 9 and simple declare the description as “hardware, software”. This will be fun to watch as it progresses through the USPTO.. but for now.. Google’s lawyers win a 3 trophy award for simplicity. They obviously didn’t come from Intel where the Pentium trademark filing scrolls on for pages and pages of unintelligible fine print. You’d think they were defining each piece of a rocket ship!
As a lovely sideline to the Android story, many more people are discovering that for years they have been using phones with software based on the Symbian platform… a name that yours truly came up with about 8 years ago. There are millions and millions out there.. and finally my name sees the light of day. I had a fascination with the word symbiosis from when I first learned what it meant.. and finally found a great use for it in a naming project where we had NEC, Nokia and Motorola for a client.. simultaneously.
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11.06.07
Posted in Education at 9:37 am by Athol
Just about when I was getting fired up about Firedog and similar names (see a few blogs below), 
Tom Pencek of Service For Profit was also getting excited about why people pay so little attention to properly naming and branding their service offerings. Since services can be so profitable, why don’t they get the same attention as products?
So now we are doing a joint one hour webinar to discuss the subject on Wed, Nov 14th at 10am PST. It is free to all. Listen in via an 800# and follow along via your internet browser. Registrants will also get a free download copy of my Creative Naming Supplement - to help you make up names when your own creative juices run dry. (Normally this is part of my Brighter Names: Naming for the Average Propeller Head book).
To register, visit https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/978507271
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11.03.07
Posted in International at 4:07 pm by Athol
The November 12th issue of Business Week has a good article titled “What’s in a Name? Fatter Profits” wherein they discuss the move to branded lines of computer and tech products for Taiwan’s old line companies now that they are under such price siege in the OEM market from mainland China. This comes as no surprise. But if they are going to use their own brands on computers, then only Acer has 
got it right, even if they re-invent their logo and positioning every few years. (I hope their switch to a lower case logo doesn’t have the same negative effect it has had on other companies like SGI).
In the article, HTC are very proud of their initials.. wonder if anyone has told them they are not as famous as IBM? Nor do they have the same marketing budget. And there is another HTC (or more). The California one is recovering from a big management scandal which makes some of us very leery of any associations with those initials - that stand for nothing we know.
But the real disaster is Asustek… this is how Business Week spells it 
(and they are of the highest editorial repute). But the trademark is actually on the name Asus and their website is at Asus.com and not at any of the Asustek domains. And they claim their company name is ASUSTek Computer Inc. All these inconsistencies do not matter much in the OEM space but are tragic in building a consumer brand. Especially when the name is unpronounceable and so awkward to start with.. looks like a typo for Aussie Tech.. now there is a name with more hop in it.
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