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From: REICHLE, CHRISTOPHER
To: mgs-owner
Subject: Re: MG Logo infringement
Date: Friday,November 10,1995 10:12AM
A company can lose their trademark if they do not protect it from being used
unofficially. Once it becomes common language, like people recognizing the
octagon to mean any british car or repair shop, they have lost the rights
and others may use it freely or even assume it as their own trademark.
Common cases like this are Kleenex, Asparine, Xerox, even McDonalds lost
their golden arches in, I believe, South Africa because they failed to
protect them. Jeep is fighting right now to protect the trademark but it is
probably too late. Jeep has become a common name.
Perhaps they are just trying to preserve the trademark to introduce new
products in the future. After 15 years it may be too late, that's why they
are flexing their muscle a little. As long as you are not using their
trademark for your own business, I wouldn't worry, unless of course if you
would like to take them to court and contest their ownership. You could
claim that they abandoned the trademark in the US and failed to protect
it...
Chris
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From: mgs-owner
To: Andrew Mace; TATERRY
Cc: British-Cars-Pre-War; mgs
Subject: Re: MG Logo infringement
Date: Thursday,November 09,1995 6:34PM
I also wonder if the trademark is lost through the decades of non
enforcement.
How many repair shops in every area use Mercedes and Jaguar etc. logos on
their
signs to show what repairs they make?
For a company not interested in bring the new MG into the states, the sudden
protection of the logo seems odd. Will they sue everyone?
Mike Leckstein
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