3 ms·

I am curious about something. Telepresence is a big Cisco brand. Is there any risk of trademark infringement? It is in a related domain, communication over v

• ars 16y ago
  Can you trademark a word from the dictionary? I don't think you can.
  • imp 16y ago
    Apple? Yahoo?
  • SwellJoe 16y ago
    You can, and probably 99% of trademarked brands are dictionary words, but not when the word means generically what your product does and you try to use just that word as your mark. You can't trademark "Computer", but you can trademark "Apple Computer" or "Dell Computer", etc. Telepresence is a recently made-up word, so it's plausible that one could register it as a mark...but defending the mark would be difficult.
• _delirium 16y ago
  The term being used in this way predates Cisco, so I think they'd have trouble enforcing it, especially outside a very narrow use of it. Here's the 1980 paper where Marvin Minsky coins and explains the term (four years before Cisco was founded, and long before their Telepresence brand): http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Telepresence.html http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Telepresence.html