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So if I read the article correctly, they owned the trademark to "taco Tuesday" in States they didn't even have stores in? "Intellectual property" is such a farce
No, it's not a fucking farce you just have minimal knowledge of how this shit works. Which why the fuck would you be lame enough to know it?
So here's how it works, because I AM that lame...
A trademark can apply to any number of limited areas. It can be limited to a geographical region, it can be limited to industry, it can be limited to a specific service, it can be limited to a specific product.
If I start a restaurant called "McBurgerPlace" in NYC and it turns out there's already a McBurgerPlace in San Francisco... well it doesn't matter because the San Francisco McBurgerPlace only has one location. They may have a trademark on the name, but infringement of a mark hinges on the concept of confusion in the marketplace. Will someone reasonably confuse MBPNYC with MBPSF? The answer is no. They're on opposite sides of the country, in different markets, serving different menus. There's no infringement because the market for each is limited to their nearby geographic region. Let's say I'm better at burgers. I start to expand. Soon, I operate 363,824 MBP restaurants worldwide. I am the king of food. Except that I'm not. I can't break into the Bay Area. Why can't I? Because that's MBPSF's territory. They were there first. They had the trademark prior to my registration. As such, I cannot enter that market with that name. Doing so would threaten their mark and lead to a lawsuit that I would almost certainly lose. It would be much easier to just rename my restaurants in that area BcPlurgerMace and get on with life.
This exact thing happened to Burger King. https://www.businessmatters925.com/post/burger-king-vs-burger-king-trademark-infringement-case-study
Look at a local business directory and see how many places are named "Five Star." Laundry, plumbing, electric, movers, etc. You can have that many "Five Star" businesses because they operate in different market segments. Nobody is going to call Five Star Plumbing thinking they're actually calling Five Star Movers. There's no competition. There is no dilution of the mark. There is no infringement.
Trademark and IP law is fucking stupid unless you're a goddamn moron and waste considerable amounts of your life reading way too much about it. For money. Because it's your job.
Life Pro Tip: Don't be a paralegal.
No, I understand how it works, nothing in your rambling justification is new to me. This one case is not the only reason why I think "intellectual property" is stupid. Just like with crypto weirdos, people who support "intellectual property" absolutely cannot fathom that someone knows how it works and doesn't like it.
Whatever you have to tell yourself so you don't have to confront that you've wasted your life defending made up nonsense.
Your explanation is interesting (and I learned a thing or two), but it fails to explain how such a term as Taco Tuesday could be considered a trademark in locations where the owner of the trademark is implanted.
Because trademarks are about market. There is no reason for a business in California to have a say over what a business in New York is named if neither will be entering the other's market.
It happens sometimes that two businesses will have the same mark in different markets but one outpaces the other in growth. If one starts encroaching on the other it typically comes down to a determination of which one was used first in that area. This is why you have the example I gave. It's also why Burger King is called Hungry Jack's in Australia.
Another issue is one of identification. Is this mark associated with this business? Unless you happen to live in an area where there's a Taco John's did you even know they existed? I had never heard of them because the nearest one to me in is fuckin' Arkansas about 400 miles from here. They're concentrated in the midwest. It's a regional chain. Why should they have any claim to a trademark in Florida? Simple answer is: They shouldn't and don't. The term is too generic and has been used by places that sell tacos for longer than this company has been around. They knew they would lost just on basic facts and no matter how they try to spin it as "BIG COMPANY BAD" the fact is they shouldn't have had the mark in the first place.