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Author Topic: TPP and TTIP  (Read 37746 times)

Helgoland

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #180 on: October 16, 2015, 04:22:15 pm »

But I've explicitly been asking for a reason; am I to take it that your answer is, "There isn't one, so quit asking?"
Hm, maybe this is the problem: I've been trying to show you the reason why Europeans care about their naming conventions. You were asking for a reason for America to adopt them though, right? Yeah, in that case I'd have to argue for global standardization of a type that only Bohandas would advocate. Standardization makes sense because it reduces the workload of companies and individuals who are spared the effort of reading through dozens of different laws in dozens of different languages. In this case the advantage is not that big though, I agree - especially if we consider that packaging is usually labelled in the country's prevalent language.

The best solution might be a small list of exceptions to the general rule, with certain conditions being imposed on the improperly labelled products. This seems like a good start.
Maybe we could try making a list of contested terms and then decide how to proceed on a case-by-case basis. Off the top of my head:
- Parmesan
- Other cheeses, like Roquefort or Feta
- Wines
- Beer, in particular Kölsch, Alt, and Trappist beers
- Bourbon
- ...
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penguinofhonor

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #181 on: October 16, 2015, 04:33:33 pm »

Hey, I exist! Bauglir, I am sure your Ameribrain can understand this as well as mine, even if you don't ultimately agree.

Think of a Big Mac. Plenty of restaurants have Big Mac knockoff burgers, but they cannot call them Big Macs. Even if they make a burger that is exactly like a Big Mac, they cannot call it a Big Mac if they are not McDonald's.

That is because the Big Mac is trademarked. If someone tries to sell a burger as a Big Mac, or even does something that can be too easily confused with a Big Mac, there are legal protections in place on McDonald's trademark. This is because the Big Mac trademark has a very functional power in the buyer/seller relationship - it conveys information about the burger and where it is from. Other businesses selling Big Macs actively erode this meaning and function, and we consider this enough harm to a business to be worth protecting them against.

There are other solutions. We could tell each restaurant to label their Big Macs, so there's the McDonald's Big Mac and the Burger King Big Mac and so on. We could congratulate McDonald's on their influence in the burger industry but tell them that you can't have a monopoly on words and they'll just have to live with the consequences of their success. But we don't do things like this because those place a burden on the people who created something successful to accommodate everyone trying to create a knockoff.

Geographical terms are functionally the same but for a different group - a region instead of a corporation/person. It is true that there are other systems that could fulfill the same function, but these systems can coexist. And there is a significant cultural attachment to this system that I think adds value to keeping it around.
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Aklyon

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #182 on: October 16, 2015, 04:40:54 pm »

Meanwhile, the USTR is trying to advertise how this is a good thing you should help them advertise about support. Instead of bothering with any sort of transparency about the finished deal.
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Helgoland

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #183 on: October 16, 2015, 04:42:14 pm »

Damn, I wish I could express myself half as well as you do, poh. *applauds*
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Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

Bauglir

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #184 on: October 16, 2015, 04:50:28 pm »

Ah, okay, yeah. It's absolutely okay for you guys to care in the first place. I ain't gonna contest that. That is your business, not mine, and you don't need to give a reason for being the people you are. Sorry I didn't do well enough at making that plain.

I don't really buy the standardization thing, because it tends only to be an issue for operations big enough to worry about exports, and in that position they can reasonably be expected to assume the burden of adjusting their products to the expectations of target markets. I would absolutely be in favor, though, of universal standards that are designed to force sellers to actually adjust this way, more than to dictate the actual qualities of products themselves.

For instance, the actual system under debate works for me because the US can do stuff like choose its own definition of "champagne", but the burden is on them to specify their own exceptions from the general rule. And it stands to reason anything they don't specify, must not have been that important. So not only is there a concrete general rule that everybody can refer to, every participant can protect the things that matter to them in particular. And there's a well-defined system for handling all that stuff, so that nobody gets caught off-guard and everybody knows exactly where to look for the information they need instead of needing to pore over a bunch of different legal codes.

EDIT: @penguinofhonor
Early on, and I forgive you for missing it considering how lengthy this has been, I explicitly mentioned that I only am talking about situations where the word has become generic. I largely agree with your description of trademarks, and it's a good analogy when the geographical term actually conveys geographical information. I don't mind if Europe wants to limit the use of the word Kölsch, because as far as I'm aware there can't be a good argument that it's become a generic term for anything.

Of course, if Big Macs ever become synoymous with something like "any sandwich containing two meat patties and a third slice of bread", I'd say that McDonald's trademark shouldn't be enforceable, but perhaps they should be the only ones allowed to use the trademark symbol with the term or something. I know trademark law doesn't work that way, but that's how I would like it to work. The point I'm trying to make is that "hamburger" shouldn't mean "sandwich from Hamburg" and should instead be allowed to refer to a general category that is so broad it wouldn't qualify for trademark if the application were filed today.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2015, 04:54:56 pm by Bauglir »
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Helgoland

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #185 on: October 16, 2015, 05:15:14 pm »

As a vegetarian, I always assumed the etymology of 'hamburger' was 'a burger with ham' :P
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The Bay12 postcard club
Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

penguinofhonor

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #186 on: October 16, 2015, 05:17:54 pm »

Man, I looked almost that far back while I was writing that.

I think we're in agreement then. Trademarks can lose their power and regional terms can too. Cheddar has too big a history in the US to expand the European limitations to here, for example (though kind of a bad example since it's not actually protected in Europe).
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Bauglir

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #187 on: October 16, 2015, 05:25:09 pm »

Oh, hey, I actually didn't know trademarks could lose their power through general use or something. Neat!

Well, anyway, sounds like I made a big stink over nothing. My bad, guys.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Helgoland

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #188 on: October 16, 2015, 05:26:13 pm »

Heh, I thought that was what this thread was for :D
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Arguably he's already a progressive, just one in the style of an enlightened Kaiser.
I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

Mech#4

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #189 on: October 16, 2015, 09:07:13 pm »

Oh, hey, I actually didn't know trademarks could lose their power through general use or something. Neat!

Well, anyway, sounds like I made a big stink over nothing. My bad, guys.

Band-aids, Kleenex and to Google something are the main ones that come to my mind.
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Bauglir

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #190 on: October 16, 2015, 09:14:04 pm »

Huh, I was pretty sure those were pretty well defended, so that you can't call a search engine "a google" in advertising, and so on. Or market your tissues as a brand of kleenex.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Bouchart

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #191 on: October 16, 2015, 09:50:26 pm »

Oh, hey, I actually didn't know trademarks could lose their power through general use or something. Neat!

Well, anyway, sounds like I made a big stink over nothing. My bad, guys.

Band-aids, Kleenex and to Google something are the main ones that come to my mind.

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Culise

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #192 on: October 17, 2015, 12:18:17 am »

Escalators and aspirin also got hit with the genericization bat.  Apparently, dry ice, laundromats, videotapes, and of all things, heroin (dating back to its days as a non-addictive replacement to morphine, almost certainly) were as well.  Amusingly, Band-Aids and Jell-o (the latter of which was my first go-to example) are technically still trademarked in a legal sense, in spite of their widespread generic use. 
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #193 on: October 17, 2015, 04:18:27 am »

Not yet. But I see people say 'google' as a verb so often it can only really last so long.
Although they do mean "Use Google".
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Calidovi

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Re: TPP and TTIP
« Reply #194 on: October 17, 2015, 09:24:17 am »

Many of these brand names 'assimilated' into our daily language are typically so well-used that's it's difficult to identify many of them.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2015, 03:14:30 pm by Laptisen »
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