Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
There have been a few popular books, the titles of course escape me now, which describe companies losing trademarks because they did not defend them. It wasn't just a matter of them not putting a little TM or circle-R symbol when THEY mentioned the brand, they did, it was a matter of them allowing the brand to be used casually and publicly by others. The brands became generic terms, and when another company did try to use the brand name commercially, and the original IP owners sued, they lost, partially because in not actively defending the brand, they effectly gave it up.
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True, but that's trademark law, not copyright law ("Aspirin" is probably the best-known example of a company losing its trademark in that way). Copyright law just doesn't work like that. A work is copyrighted, even if it doesn't contain a copyright notice, and nobody can claim that they didn't know that it was.