Saturday, January 19, 2013

Subway has a nice knock-down argument against length complaints

Subway says "footlong" is just a descriptive (um, wouldn't that be deceptively misdescriptive?) trademark, not a statement about length.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Ch. 6

1 comment:

James Grimmelmann said...

And indeed, FOOTLONG is currently the subject of opposition proceedings before the TTAB, on the grounds that the mark is not just descriptive but generic.