WEBVTT - Are Most Words Already Trademarked?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:10.479
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. The writer of today's episode,

0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:13.680
<v Speaker 1>John Paritano, rescued two cats from a local vet back

0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.680
<v Speaker 1>in and named one Pandora. He says he was reading

0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.439
<v Speaker 1>a lot of Greek mythology back then. A couple of

0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.759
<v Speaker 1>years later, Pandora brand jewelry became all the rage. What

0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.080
<v Speaker 1>if John had trademarked that name first, he and his

0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.960
<v Speaker 1>furry friend could have been swimming in cat treats. Yet,

0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:34.600
<v Speaker 1>even if he had thought of it, according to two

0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.599
<v Speaker 1>New York University law professors, it probably would have been

0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.600
<v Speaker 1>too late to cash in. It seems that many of

0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.880
<v Speaker 1>the words we use every day are already trademarked, which

0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.839
<v Speaker 1>means it's difficult for entrepreneurs to find good names for

0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:51.400
<v Speaker 1>new companies. Take Pandora, for instance. Search the U S

0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.560
<v Speaker 1>Patent and Trademark Office database and you'd find a number

0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:57.760
<v Speaker 1>of companies that already used Pandora in their name, avatars,

0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:02.600
<v Speaker 1>and logos. There's a Pandora hair collection, Pandora Radio, and yes,

0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.479
<v Speaker 1>Pandora's box. The two professors looked at the six point

0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:09.839
<v Speaker 1>seven million trademark applications filed at the U S. Patent

0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:13.959
<v Speaker 1>and Trademark Office between two thousand three and sixteen. They

0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.360
<v Speaker 1>then studied a database of the hundred thousand most frequently

0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.800
<v Speaker 1>used words in American English. It's called the Corpus of

0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:25.360
<v Speaker 1>Contemporary American English. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there

0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.000
<v Speaker 1>are a bit under two hundred thousand words currently in

0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.880
<v Speaker 1>use in the English language, but according to the website

0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.319
<v Speaker 1>test your rocab dot com, the median adult native English

0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:38.400
<v Speaker 1>speaker knows only about twenty to thirty five thousand of them.

0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.679
<v Speaker 1>But back to the study, The authors also reviewed a

0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.040
<v Speaker 1>U S Census list of the a hundred and fifty

0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.320
<v Speaker 1>one thousand, six hundred seventy two most frequently occurring surnames

0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.560
<v Speaker 1>in the United States. What they found will knock your

0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.520
<v Speaker 1>socks off, which by the way, is also trademarked. They

0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.240
<v Speaker 1>wrote in a teen issue of the Harvard Law Review,

0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:03.760
<v Speaker 1>the data to present compelling evidence of substantial word mark depletion,

0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.560
<v Speaker 1>particularly with respect to the sets of potential marks that

0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.240
<v Speaker 1>businesses prefer. Most standard English words, short neologisms that are

0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:18.240
<v Speaker 1>pronounceable by English speakers, and common American surnames. Neologism is

0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:22.320
<v Speaker 1>a term for newly coined words or expressions. As best

0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.480
<v Speaker 1>we can tell, neologism is still available to be trademarked,

0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:30.120
<v Speaker 1>though other common words do have pending registrations, including even

0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:36.239
<v Speaker 1>the word the yes. The currently has eleven active trademark resignations.

0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.440
<v Speaker 1>The result of so many trademarks is that new businesses

0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.840
<v Speaker 1>have to strain their noggins, and yes, variations of noggin

0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.160
<v Speaker 1>are already taken to come up with monikers that aren't

0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:51.320
<v Speaker 1>already claimed, or resort to what's called a parallel registration.

0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.160
<v Speaker 1>That's when two companies use the exact same name as

0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.480
<v Speaker 1>long as it won't confuse consumers, for example, Delta Faucets

0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:04.520
<v Speaker 1>versus Delta Airlines. The authors wrote, given these conditions, new

0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:09.280
<v Speaker 1>applicants are increasingly resorting to suboptimal marks. The data indicate

0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.519
<v Speaker 1>that applicants are applying less often for standard English words

0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.720
<v Speaker 1>and common surnames, and more often for complex marks as

0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:21.320
<v Speaker 1>measured by character syllable and word count, and all of

0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.600
<v Speaker 1>this could likely explain why we see more company names

0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:28.000
<v Speaker 1>like flicker, Tumbler, and Lift, all of which leave out

0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:37.080
<v Speaker 1>letters or incorporate other misspellings of common words. Today's episode

0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.640
<v Speaker 1>was written by John Paritano and produced by Tyler Clang.

0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.000
<v Speaker 1>For more on this and lots of other wordy topics,

0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.760
<v Speaker 1>visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of

0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.520
<v Speaker 1>iHeart Radio. Or more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:50.320
<v Speaker 1>the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:51.320
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows,