Judge doubts Intel can defeat Intelmark trademark

The Court of Appeal has said Intel should fail in its bid to erase the trademark of a telemarketing company. The court has referred questions to the European Court of Justice but made clear that the chip giant deserves to lose. CPM, a large field marketing and telemarketing firm in the UK, registered "Intelmark" in 1997 as a …

[SImon Hobson]

Well if Intel won on that ...

... the military would be worried.

Think of all the retraining required, what would they use as shorthand for 'intelligance' insteaf of 'intel' ?

And I guess that's where this marketing firm came up with their name, as "marketing intel" meaning intelligence on marketing issues.

Sorry Intel, I think you are ehibiting a distince lack of 'intel' on this one !

[sleepy]

Quite right . . .

The judge is quite right to limit Intel's attempts to hijack a component of the language. "intel-" is the root of several long established dictionary words. Both organisations clearly hoped to benefit by association with intelligence, intellect etc. That takes precedence over a later additional association with Intel Corp. However, that defence does not work at all for anyone registering a mark reminiscent of "Kodak".

Attempting to hijack the language and prevent competitors using convenient terminology is an established activity of large companies - witness Microsoft with word, office, excel, windows etc.

For many years (and even today, for all I know) Intel printed materials included an absurd statement along the lines of: " i is a registered trademark of Intel, and may not be used without permission".

Perhaps Kodak should have taken this ancient joke to court: "What's bald and clicks? A Kojack Instamatic."

oops - showing my age.