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Xerox Ad Pretends We Care About Its Trademark Rights to Term 'Xerox'

By Bruce Carton

What do you care more about: Xerox's trademark rights to the term "xerox" or the lives of individual mosquitos? Eric Johnson has a great post on the PrawfsBlawg tied to a concept in Larry Lessig's new book, Remix. Analyzing Lessig's take on the differences between commercial economies and sharing economies, Johnson summarizes that "friends do favors for one another in a sharing economy, and corporations and customers use cash as the medium of exchange in a commercial economy." Thus, it would be odd for a friend who missed a lunch date with you to offer you $50 to make it up to you, and also odd for, say, McDonald's to ask you to "help out" by promising to buy its hamburgers at least once a month. This concept is the lead-in to Johnson's rant on Xerox's ad in the current issue of the ABA Journal: Taking the words right out of my mouth, Johnson says, "Dude, I'm sorry, but what the #@!& do I care if Xerox loses its trademark registration to 'xerox'? Wow. I've got other stuff to care about. Like the lives of individual mosquitoes." Johnson acknowledges that courts will consider educational advertising when determining if a trademark...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).