You should’ve trademarked that word. Probably.

You may want to think again if you’re planning to use the words “should’ve” and “shouldve” in your work marketing any time soon as you could soon be receiving a letter from Specsavers.

The company, which uses “should’ve gone to Specsavers” in its adverts, recently trademarked the words, meaning that other businesses won’t be able to use the words in their marketing.

This is not the first time that a company has managed to trademark a single word.

Carlsberg’s tagline ‘Probably the best beer in the world’ was created in 1973 and the brewing company have since trademarked the word ‘probably’. In fact, at UEFA Euro 2016 in France, the company simply had the word ‘probably’ advertising their brand in stadiums due to French laws where alcohol cannot be advertised on television and sponsorship of sport is permitted.

So, what other brands have been successful in their trademarking pursuits? Obviously, there are the likes of McDonalds and their catchy phrase ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ which was filed for back in 2003. Then there is sports brand Nike and their tagline of ‘Just Do It’.

Google have a number of trademarks and a whole list of do’s and don’ts including only using the word ‘Google’ as an adjective, never a noun or verb and not using the logo as the ‘most prominent element on your web page’.

Other companies where you would risk getting into a law suit or two with if you were to use their name and brand in any way in your marketing include The Hoover Company, Biro and Portakabin.

Although there has been plenty of success with trademark stories, there have been many that were denied fairly early on in the process. Back in 2004, US Republican nominee Donald Trump was on a mission to trademark the phrase ‘You’re Fired’ from reality TV show The Apprentice.

Trump had plans to put the phrase on merchandise and games, but the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected his attempts, fearing that the two words could be mistaken for the board game You’re Hired.

More recently, Electronic Arts (EA) got into some trouble with Ubisoft after wanting to trademark the word ‘Ghost’. Yes, you read that correctly. They applied back in March 2015 in order to trademark the word for its Ghost Games studio. However, Ubisoft pointed out that they had been using the Ghost Recon mark since 2001, long before EA claimed date of first use.

They get worse however. Harley Davidson attempted to trademark the sound of a revving engine. However, as you can imagine, it fell through when other manufacturers complained that their engines sounded, well, exactly the same.

Retail giant Walmart tried to trademark the yellow smiley face design in 2006, even though the design has been around since at least the 70s. The court soon dismissed it though, claiming that a smiley face is in public domain.

On home turf, KFC were not happy with a pub in North Yorkshire in 2007. The Tan Hill Inn, which is the highest pub in England, were told that they needed to remove the words ‘family feast’ from its menu. KFC’s lawyers said the company had registered the wording ‘family feast’ as a trademark. However, within hours the fast food company dropped the issue and the legal fight that was going to come along with it.

 

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