I used to order materials from the Acme Foam company. The UPS drivers thought it was a hoot. I suggested to the company that they should advertise Rocket Powered Roller Skates but I guess they didn’t like the idea.
And Duran Duran was a character in Barbarella.
Robot itself is a good example of the evolutionary process. Robot was a word coined from a Czech term for compulsory labor, by Karel Capek in a 1920 sci-fi play. It quickly moved into the general vocabulary, and 20 years later, Isaac Asimov created “robotics” as a technological process of designing and creating robots… Neither Robot nor Robotics has been challenged as a common noun in English.
So “robotics” is a generic term for a technological process, just like “dry cleaning” or “printing”, and are not restricted in any way from being used within trade names, like US Robotics, or even Asimov Dry Cleaning.
There were already businesses named Acme long before the Roadrunner cartoons. WB used it because it was a common small business name. The chances that you were the first one to think of a clever business name are pretty slim.
It’s possible for multiple businesses to have similar or identical names without infringing on each other. For instance, different cities could have drycleaning shops named Zombie Cleaners.
I remember a case many years ago in which a drycleaner named Dy-Dee sued a competitor, Tidee-Didee, for trademark infringement because their names were too similar. IIRC, they lost the case, but I had great fun imagining teams of lawyers sitting in a conference room talking baby talk.
According to Wikipedia, Acme was a popular company name because it would appear early in the alphabetical directory listing in phonebooks. (Presumably this was before an alphabetical arms race developed, with names like “AAA Cleaning” etc.) Chuck Jones says they chose the name for the cartoons because it was already a well known company name.
–Mark
Post 40
Post 43
Glitch in the matrix
Nitpick: Although they named themselves for the Barbarella character, they changed the spelling. The character was named Dr. Durand Durand.
I realise this thread is something of a zombie, but it’s apropos to note that there’s an estate agent in London called Hotblack Desiato, named after the character in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m not sure if Douglas Adams or his publishers trademarked that name, though.
It’s the other way round. The character was named after the estate agent.
There is also the rather famous case of Hershey’s Chocolate and Hershey’s Ice Cream. There is no relationship between these companies, except for the fact that they were both founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 1890’s by men named Hershey, who were not related. One would think that ice cream is a natural business extension from a chocolate business and vice versa, but this is not enough to make either one infringing.
I stand very corrected! You’re absolutely right; I just assumed that a zany name like that was a Douglas Adams special. :smack: Ignorance fought.
Not every fake company name or brand name that might appear in a fictional work is necessarily a trademark use. It would first have to be established that “Java the Hut” is indeed an unregistered trademark.