[not sure what the third one is, but I’m going to guess it’s the first one registered under the 1881 law.]
Anyway, that’s for registered trademarks. For unregistered marks, elsewhere in the article it says Löwenbräu claims one from 1383, although if you go to the Löwenbräu Brewery wikipage, it says the lion emblem dates from the 17th century. That’s in Germany; what about in other countries? What is the oldest common law trademark still in use in countries like the US, Canada, the UK, etc.?
Here’s a list in Wikipedia of the oldest companies in the world. The five oldest ones are all in Japan (a construction company, three hotels, and a paper-goods company); I have no idea which, if any, of the oldest companies on the list have actual trademarks, however.
(Parenthetical: I’ve eaten lunch at #6 on the list, Stiftskeller St. Peter in Salzburg, Austria.)
There aren’t any “common law trademarks”, strictly speaking. But you could certainly have an organisation that uses a badge or symbol that is very ancient, and that has established or acquired, or has been granted, the exclusive right to that badge or symbol.
That’s pretty much the law of heraldry, come to think of it. What we may be looking for is the oldest body that has a coat of arms or similar heraldic device, and that has engaged in some commercial activity and used its arms to identify itself in that context.
The Worshipful Company of Mercers in London might be one candidate. It was incorporated by royal charter in 1394, but had been operating before that date. It used a seal showing a maids head from at least 1425, if not earlier, and displayed the same symbol on its premises. It still uses the maid’s head device.
The oldest still existant “common law” trademark, if by that you mean a symbol or text that functions as a source identifier in trade but was not registered as a trademark because trademark registration did not exist but nevertheless is protected by present day trademark law (in being legally prevented from being trademarked) would probably be the flag of a nation, or a royal family title/figure/mark, or some form of heraldry or finally, the name of the location where an item is grown/produced. As mentioned above, a business name is also possible but perhaps harder to nail down dates of when it became well-known (which would be necessary to function as a trademark in an unregistered manner).
The right wing claims P&G’s logo is Satanic. The company has even filed lawsuits over it (Including one against Amway), for spreading that misinformation.
Well, claimed, anyway. I imagine that that rumor will never entirely die, but it was in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, and seems to be much less pronounced now.
True, though the genesis of the Amway issue appears to have been a voicemail that Amway sent out to its distributors in 1995, which was, as I remember it, when the myth was still more widely circulated; at that time, I was still working at one of P&G’s competitors (not Amway!).
Trademarks are specifically associated with trade; there’s a clue in the name. So a symbol like, say, the letters “SPQR”, used by the municipality of Rome, is very ancient, and it’s exclusives used by the municipality and (I’m guessing) the municipality could enforce its exclusive use by law if it had to, but it’s not a “trademark”, because it’s associated with a particular government function, not with trade.
I’m not aware that, at common law, anyone every had the right to an exclusive mark or badge in conection with trade. There’s the common law tort of passing off, in which I market goods packaged and presented in a way that is confusing similar to your well-known product, with a view to misleading consumers and trading off your goodwill and reputation. But that’s about overall appearance and presentation, not specifically about any particular mark or badge.
In the common-law world, my guess would be that the first trade marks - i.e. exclusive marks associated with trade - arose not at common law but through the royal prerogative - i.e. the crown would grant some person or company the exclusive trade to a particular trade, and would also grant them a badge, mark, coat of arms or similar that they could use in connection with that trade. And in time that was done sufficiently often that it became convenient to put the whole thing on a statutory basis, and enact a law dealing with how people could apply for trade marks, how they would be granted, and how they could be defended, once granted.