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Do you really think that the average person browsing iTunes realizes that there is a difference between the TWIT brand and all of the "This Week In . . ." stuff? Largely, they don't. I've spoken with people that didn't realize they were unrelated. There's a reason for trademark law. So that someone can't come in and do the same thing you're doing in the same market with an identical branding and stir up confusion and dilute your own business brand. I suppose the audience at TWiT may generally be savvy enough to recognize there is no relation, but the network also caters to a very large audience of laymen who can no more discern the two This Week In tech-related networks than they can discern "The Internet" from "Internet Explorer". I've dealt with this, personally, when someone produced the exact same service as I had been providing for many years. They changed two letters in the name and that was it. For years afterward, there was great confusion among the audience and I had to deal with people emailing me to complain about problems with the other group that I had nothing to do with, because they didn't realize they were different. They filed reports about me, thinking that I was the other place. They would use my service and get upset that "the site has changed", because they didn't realize that they had been visiting "the other" site this whole time. The only reason I couldn't do anything about it is because I'm just one guy and I don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on lawyers and legal processes or, believe me, I would have. You might also notice that "This Week In NASCAR" would, of course, be about NASCAR. There is almost no concern about brand confusion or dilution when one is about technology and the other is about racing. There is, however, potential for brand confusion when one is primarily about technology and tech culture and the other is about technology and tech culture. And when one is distributed over the internet and iTunes and the other is distributed over the internet and iTunes. It is a naming attempt made deliberately for confusion. You can't argue that it isn't, because any reasonable person starting a project would look at the naming conventions of similar services and products and say "well, I don't want to be confused with this other one, so I want my name to be unique and very identifiable". It's skeezy, unprofessional, and the fact that the guy asked "do you mind if I name my show This Week In..." shows that he recognized it (notice he only ever said "the show" and not "an entire network"). Anyway, I'm not invested in TWIT whatsoever and normally could not care less, despite the characterization you attempt to apply. However, it certainly bears some relevance to the topic as it was posted. |