[lahvak]

> There is no world in which it would be better for anyone to be able to claim they are selling an iPhone with iPhone branding and everything over it while selling an old Alcatel feature phone.

Except that it would not happen. In a word without trademark protection, people would be like "what the heck is an iPhone, what does it do?" because the word iPhone would have no meaning. You would have to sell based on capabilities, rather than brand name. There would have to be sufficiently strong laws against false advertising and deceptive marketing, but I can see number of advantages over the current system.

I agree with the rest of your post. The whole case is increasingly looking like a successful publicity stunt by the two companies to me. I don't think I would know anything about Bad Spaniels otherwise, and while Jack Daniels is well known, the way addiction works I would not be surprised if a large number of people were hitting their local liqueur store after seeing this case on the news.

[simiones]

We have a pretty good idea of how commerce worked before widespread legal trademark protections, and you're dead wrong about it. Trademarks are much older than trademark law. Before they were protected in law, they were usually made very intricate in the hopes that other craftsmen would not be able to reproduce them, kind of like a signature.

And the reason is also self-evident: it is very hard if not impossible to assess all of the relevant capabilities of a manufactured product just on an quick inspection. Even if you were able to do so for one category of product, you'll not be an expert in every category. As such, the only way to know the true quality of products you are buying is to rely on the reputation of the one crafting them, and the branding of the products is used to establish the chain of trust (this shoe has such-and-such craftsman's mark, so I know its a quality shoe because I've bought other shoes from them in the past and they lasted two decades).

Even if you had very strong laws to prevent false advertising of features, it's extremely cost-prohibitive to establish build quality objectively without relying on the reputation of the maker. How would that even look? What would you expect to see on a non-branded shirt to tell you whether it's a good quality weave or a poor one? Whether the color is strongly bonded to the fabric or it will wash off? Whether the seams are sturdy or prone to breaking?

[JumpCrisscross]

> In a word without trademark protection, people would be like "what the heck is an iPhone, what does it do?" because the word iPhone would have no meaning. You would have to sell based on capabilities, rather than brand name

I am not aware of this ever having occurred across history. Instead, brands become personal. You don’t buy an iPhone, you buy master Tim Cook’s phone.

[roarcher]

Of course brand names would still exist. People name things for the sake of brevity. If someone says to you, "Hey that's a nice phone, I'd like to get one, what kind is it?", are you going to rattle off its entire list of technical specs, after which they'll still have no idea how to find one?