| EDIT: To be clear I'm not a legal expert. Trademarks are context specific and you can trademark "common terms" IF (and at lest theoretically only if) it's used in a very narrow use-case which by itself isn't confusable with the generic term. The best example here is Apple which is a generic term but trademarked in context of phones/computer/music manufacturing (and by now a bunch of other things). Through there had been an Apple music label with a bit of back and force of legal cases (and some IMHO very questionable court rulings) which in the end Ended by Apple buying that Label. So theoretically it's not too bad. Practically big companies like Apple, Nvidia and similar can just swamp smaller companies with absurd legal fees to force their win (AFIK this is Metas strategie because I honestly have no idea how they think the term Meta for data processing is trademarkable), to make it worse local curt have often shown to not properly apply the law in such conflicts if the other party is from an other country (one or two US states are infamous for very biased legal decision in this kind of cases). So yeah at the core this aspect of the trademark system is not a terrible idea, but the execution is sadly often fairly lacking. And even high profile cases of trademark abuse often have no consequences if it's a "favorite big company". (For balance negative EU example do include Lego and it's 3d trademark and absurdly biased curt rulings, or Ferrero and it's Kinder (german. Children) trademark on Chocolate). EDIT: also not the two TM: Grace™ Hopper™ both Grace and Hopper are generic terms you can under some circumstances trademark and then use together, but while probably legal you would likely want to avoid trademarking (Grace Hopper)™ |