Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. The writer of today's episode,
Speaker 1: John Paritano, rescued two cats from a local vet back
Speaker 1: in and named one Pandora. He says he was reading
Speaker 1: a lot of Greek mythology back then. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later, Pandora brand jewelry became all the rage. What
Speaker 1: if John had trademarked that name first, he and his
Speaker 1: furry friend could have been swimming in cat treats. Yet,
Speaker 1: even if he had thought of it, according to two
Speaker 1: New York University law professors, it probably would have been
Speaker 1: too late to cash in. It seems that many of
Speaker 1: the words we use every day are already trademarked, which
Speaker 1: means it's difficult for entrepreneurs to find good names for
Speaker 1: new companies. Take Pandora, for instance. Search the U S
Speaker 1: Patent and Trademark Office database and you'd find a number
Speaker 1: of companies that already used Pandora in their name, avatars,
Speaker 1: and logos. There's a Pandora hair collection, Pandora Radio, and yes,
Speaker 1: Pandora's box. The two professors looked at the six point
Speaker 1: seven million trademark applications filed at the U S. Patent
Speaker 1: and Trademark Office between two thousand three and sixteen. They
Speaker 1: then studied a database of the hundred thousand most frequently
Speaker 1: used words in American English. It's called the Corpus of
Speaker 1: Contemporary American English. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there
Speaker 1: are a bit under two hundred thousand words currently in
Speaker 1: use in the English language, but according to the website
Speaker 1: test your rocab dot com, the median adult native English
Speaker 1: speaker knows only about twenty to thirty five thousand of them.
Speaker 1: But back to the study, The authors also reviewed a
Speaker 1: U S Census list of the a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: one thousand, six hundred seventy two most frequently occurring surnames
Speaker 1: in the United States. What they found will knock your
Speaker 1: socks off, which by the way, is also trademarked. They
Speaker 1: wrote in a teen issue of the Harvard Law Review,
Speaker 1: the data to present compelling evidence of substantial word mark depletion,
Speaker 1: particularly with respect to the sets of potential marks that
Speaker 1: businesses prefer. Most standard English words, short neologisms that are
Speaker 1: pronounceable by English speakers, and common American surnames. Neologism is
Speaker 1: a term for newly coined words or expressions. As best
Speaker 1: we can tell, neologism is still available to be trademarked,
Speaker 1: though other common words do have pending registrations, including even
Speaker 1: the word the yes. The currently has eleven active trademark resignations.
Speaker 1: The result of so many trademarks is that new businesses
Speaker 1: have to strain their noggins, and yes, variations of noggin
Speaker 1: are already taken to come up with monikers that aren't
Speaker 1: already claimed, or resort to what's called a parallel registration.
Speaker 1: That's when two companies use the exact same name as
Speaker 1: long as it won't confuse consumers, for example, Delta Faucets
Speaker 1: versus Delta Airlines. The authors wrote, given these conditions, new
Speaker 1: applicants are increasingly resorting to suboptimal marks. The data indicate
Speaker 1: that applicants are applying less often for standard English words
Speaker 1: and common surnames, and more often for complex marks as
Speaker 1: measured by character syllable and word count, and all of
Speaker 1: this could likely explain why we see more company names
Speaker 1: like flicker, Tumbler, and Lift, all of which leave out
Speaker 1: letters or incorporate other misspellings of common words. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by John Paritano and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other wordy topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
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