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'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

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Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#161

Post by sio8ohPi »

hannasanarion wrote: post #135
macintux wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, slander and libel are well-established legal principles despite freedom of speech.

And fiction is never libel. Libel requires a falsehood about someone to be presented as truth, causing demonstrable damage, with actual malice.

This simply isn't true. See for instance Batra v Wolf et al, among many other examples:

https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2008/04/batra-...

> Plaintiff Ravi Batra, a bald, Indian-American lawyer involved in a judicial corruption scandal, filed a libel-in-fiction claim against the writers, producers and broadcasters of the television show Law & Order, claiming that an episode about a judicial bribery scandal that included a character who was a bald, Indian-American lawyer named Ravi Patel was defamatory. The court reached this holding after noting that no libel-in-fiction law suit in New York state court had survived a motion to dismiss in almost 25 years, and then denied defendants’ motion to dismiss.

Actual malice is additionally only necessary if the victim is a public figure.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#162

Post by neilparikh »

YokoZar wrote: post #158
crooked-v wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called trademark erosion. An example of this historically would be aspirin, which was originally a trademarked brand name of Bayer but was legally ruled in 1918 and 1921 to have become genericized, because the company took no actions to prevent others from using the name. This generally only applies when non-holders use the trademark to market in the same field as the original business, though: not "we went t…

Aspirin didn't become generic because Bayer "took no action", it became generic because the trademark was surrendered as an explicit term in the Treaty of Versailles. Most trademarks these days don't need to worry about being the literal spoils of war.

Bayer lost their trademark because Treaty of Versailles, but it became generic later in a court case due to lack of action.

Edit: Actually, I think Bayer lost it even earlier, during the war, through the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#163

Post by dfox »

cosmodisk wrote: post #107
solinent wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo... I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure. I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a m…

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

"Jeep" is kind of special case as it apparently was used as generic name before there was the brand and trademark.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#164

Post by [deleted] »

dfox wrote: post #163
cosmodisk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

"Jeep" is kind of special case as it apparently was used as generic name before there was the brand and trademark.

[deleted]

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#165

Post by kisstheblade »

cosmodisk wrote: post #107
solinent wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo... I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure. I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a m…

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

Jeep is actually enforcing this! In the game hill climb racer 2 there were two vehicles, "Jeep" and "Super Jeep". They had to change the names of the vehicles in the game... (To "Hill Climber").

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#166

Post by exoque »

cosmodisk wrote: post #107
solinent wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo... I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure. I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a m…

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

I don't know where in Europe you live but i see lots of Jeeps. BMWs and Mercedes are more prevalent though.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#167

Post by crottypeter »

galkk wrote: post #155
alkonaut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term or similar ones exist all over the world. The concept of “SUV” is weird to begin with and doesn’t easily translate. Also, the ur-SUVs with truck chassis basically don’t exist outside North America. What the rest of the world call SUVs are X5’s and XC90’s and similar (“crossover” is used for smaller ones usually, despite no technical difference) The common and slightly derogatory term for an X5/Q7/XC90 type…

> The common and slightly derogatory term for an X5/Q7/XC90 type SUV in Swedish is “Stadsjeep” (“city jeep”). The Russian term for that is "parquet jeep"

In the UK we say "Chelsea tractor". Definitely derogatorily.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#168

Post by crottypeter »

pokeymcsnatch wrote: post #131
thatguy0900 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I've never heard jeep used like that in the U.S. Actual jeeps are pretty common here though.

There's quite a few people (in the US) that use "jeep" as a general term for any Jeep-sized offroading vehicle.

In fact the word "jeep" came from the colloquial contraction of "GP" - general purpose (vehicle).

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#169

Post by ForHackernews »

tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #159
malkia wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born in Bulgaria, can confirm - "Джип", or "Джипка" which is really "Jeep" in bulgarian (and probably other slavic languages). Another one is "Yonica" for any synthesizer. Obviously "Scotch" (more for the tape, than drink). But... What I really love is "Pampers" - yes this is the bulgarian word for... "diapers"... and many more...

Don't forget "Xerox"

Amusing and relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/verbatim-what-is-...

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#170

Post by Plyphon_ »

KeytarHero wrote: post #124
cosmodisk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

How is this an example of trademark erosion? Fiat-Chrysler still owns the rights to the name and would easily be able sue a competitor that tried calling their vehicle a Jeep. Sure, it's colloquially used as a genericized trademark, but it's not a true example, unlike ones like aspirin, cellophane, escalator - or yes, trampoline.

One is erosion in progress, the other has eroded fully.

Both great examples of trademark erosion, tbh.

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