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> According to the legal counsel at my company, trademark restrictions
> require
> that every appearence of our trademarked software's name be used as an
> adjective--an adjective that modifies what the trademark was intended to
> identify.
>
> For example, saying "SoftwareNameTM provides cool functionality" doesn't
> fly. I must always say "The SoftwareNameTM software provides cool
> functionality."
>
> This isn't something that I've seen in documentation or marketing for
> other
> software. Is it familiar to other writers out there who work with
> trademarked products?
I was "asked" to do it that way when I first started the current gig, many
years ago, then again when we were bought and the purchasing company
harmonized the documentation. Then, we were bought yet again, but I have not
seen an explicit lawyer notice (and we do have an active-and-aware live-in
corporate counsel) commanding us to do it that way since the .
I can sorta see the legality of it, if not the logic. How, really does use
of a product name as a noun really repudiate one's trademark?
Time I asked - and thereby stirred up some trouble for marketing bods as
well. :-)
Come to think of it... I was forgetting... we've been - effectively - bought
again. We were just taken private by a capital company. No doubt they will
have explicit concerns about trademark assertion/protection.
Kevin
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