[HN Gopher] Paraguay Loves Mickey, the Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doe...
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Paraguay Loves Mickey, the Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn't
Author : howard941
Score : 166 points
Date : 2024-09-15 21:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| muhoweb wrote:
| Mirror: https://archive.is/TmaOu
| kragen wrote:
| you'd think an article nominally about 'intellectual property'
| would mention that mickey mouse is out of copyright now, at least
| in countries that apply the rule of the shorter term
|
| https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
| codetrotter wrote:
| But the Mickey Mouse that is out of copyright is specifically
| the one you see in Steamboat Willie from 1928 (and maybe some
| of their other old movies with Mickey, I don't remember what
| other movies Disney made early on around 1928).
|
| Meanwhile the Mickey that is shown posing on top of a building
| in one of the photos looks like a more recent Mickey. (But I'm
| no Mickey expert.)
|
| And it is important to keep that in mind.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Which is why Crooked Media can sell a t-shirt of two
| Steamboat Willies kissing without receiving a cease and
| desist but can't feature a pair of more modern looking
| Mickeys going at it:
| https://store.crooked.com/collections/pride-or-
| else/products...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's still a trademark for perpetuity. Copyright expiration on
| specific films doesn't change that. This is why Disney started
| using the pie-eyed mickey more heavily in their marketing 10+
| years ago to reinforce their trademark over that version of the
| character.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's in trademark as long as Disney registers and renews the
| trademark in whatever country.
|
| And trademark doesn't protect against any and all use in the
| same way copyright does -- only uses that might create
| consumer confusion with the trademark owner's uses.
|
| Presumably, a company that has been selling grocery staples
| since 1935 with that logo isn't creating much confusion.
|
| Arguably, Paraguayan Mickey has a better claim that modern
| do-everything Disney Mickey is infringing on _its_ long-
| established trademark...
| eru wrote:
| > Presumably, a company that has been selling grocery
| staples since 1935 with that logo isn't creating much
| confusion.
|
| Yes, though their mascot might be? The article itself
| clearly states that the locals seem to associate the man-
| in-costume-mascot with going to Disneyland.
| labster wrote:
| It's not Mickey's fault that a foreign company created a
| theme park with their corporate mascot 20 years later.
| Just one of those weird coincidences hahaha.
| eru wrote:
| Perhaps they should have registered a trademark for Theme
| Parks to prevent that from happening?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Mickey Mouse was created in 1928. Grocery Store was
| created in 1935.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| What is pie-eyed mickey?
| latexr wrote:
| It's the older version where there's no division between
| the sclera (white of eye) and the rest of the skull:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mickey_-
| _The_...
|
| Compare to later versions, where the eyes are well defined:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Mickey_-
| _Fant...
|
| In recent years, Disney has been using the old version from
| Steamboat Willie at the start of movies:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie
|
| And even making new shorts with that style:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC6qIbU1olyXQe1WOKt8
| U...
| swayvil wrote:
| The new shorts. It's some kind of Lovecraftian mockery.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah, those really are awful. Ren and Stimpyified but
| made for the modern 3 second attention span.
| mrighele wrote:
| Oh boy.
|
| While the art is similar, the animation is quite
| different (in a very bad way). They are also completely
| unfunny.
|
| (* goes back to watch old hand-animated episodes of
| Tom&Jerry and Wile E. Coyote *)
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| I thought "pie-eyed" was specifically where there's a
| triangular "shine"/cutout from the black pupil, like a
| pie with one slice removed. Your first example has solid
| black eyes.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Disney's claims and paperwork has to be accepted by the
| Paraguayan trademark office specifically in this case, not
| just any trademark office.
|
| Unless both the US and Paraguay have ratified a 100%
| automatic international trademark treaty, which seems
| unlikely.
| kragen wrote:
| copyright is subject to broad international recognition under
| a couple of very widespread treaties, and the pct provides a
| weaker way to obtain the same patent in a smaller set of
| countries, but trademark is an explicitly local thing. even
| in the usa, a trademark in one town may not be valid in the
| next (think 'jones's 24-hour laundry') and even registered
| trademarks are often only registered in the trademark office
| of one state. (every state has its own trademark office, in
| addition to the federal pto.) there is no trademark
| equivalent of the berne convention or the pct
|
| so the idea of a paraguayan company, in paraguay, infringing
| a us trademark, is legal hogwash. mickey is a disney
| trademark in paraguay only to the extent that the paraguayan
| government decides to grant it to them, a decision that
| should be made on the basis of, among other things, existing
| uses by other companies. this is a fundamental and
| intentional feature of trademark law in every jurisdiction i
| am familiar with, not a bug
|
| -- *** --
|
| to a significant extent trademark law is arbitrary in the
| same way traffic laws are. there's no objective reason,
| nothing justifiable according to some kind of natural law,
| that says you should drive on the left side of the road, or
| stop when the traffic light turns red rather than green. if
| everyone else is driving on the right side of the road, or
| stopping when their light turns green and your light turns
| red, that would be a better thing to do. the law in these
| cases is merely establishing a schelling point that allows a
| large society to coordinate their actions through more or
| less random but well-known decisions
|
| the justification for trademark law is to protect consumers
| from inferior goods bearing the name of a reputable maker,
| but made by someone else. for this purpose it reserves
| particular names and logos for the exclusive use of
| particular makers. _which_ particular names and logos are
| reserved for which particular makers is essentially
| arbitrary; what matters is that it be relatively consistent
| over time, so that consumers aren 't buying good mickey-
| branded bread from the paraguayan mickey company one day and
| adulterated mickey-branded bread licensed by disney the next
|
| (you can argue that to some extent modern trademark law is
| failing at this job, due to notorious cases of perfectly
| legal line extension fraud--such as exploding tempered-soda-
| lime-glass pyrex, saran-free saran wrap, pseudoephedrine-free
| sudafed, kaopectate without kaolin or pectin, and generic
| t-shirts bearing a designer's licensed brand--or the
| widespread phenomenon of private equity firms buying a
| quality brand and replacing its products with inferior
| replacements. but that's the justification for its existence)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Easy there, they're trying to make your tri-star symbol
| into the https://symbol.fediverse.info/, maybe a case for
| future trademark/identity law /s
| kragen wrote:
| everyone has my permission ;)
| tangus wrote:
| As the article says, the Paraguayan company has been filing
| and renewing the Mickey trademark, without challenge, since
| the 1950s. That's the reason Disney lost the suit.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Um, except that the article is about a trademark. Mickey (the
| Paraguayan company) isn't printing comics or producing
| cartoons, so how would copyright apply?
|
| (as your linked article from duke.edu explicitly explains)
| rubyfan wrote:
| Yeah it's a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.
| mig39 wrote:
| They're using Mickey Mouse (or their version of him), as a
| mascot. Doesn't that mean it's about a trademark?
|
| The business in question literally has a mouse, named Mickey,
| that looks a lot like the trademark of Disney, on their
| packaging, their buildings, and their advertisements. They
| are literally using Disney's trademark.
| eru wrote:
| Oh, yes? That's exactly what the comment you are replying
| to is talking about:
|
| The article is about trademark, not copyright.
| kragen wrote:
| it's possible for a single thing to be subject to both
| trademark and copyright law, even in the usa; often the
| owners of the copyright and the trademark are different. this
| is how graphic designers get paid for designing corporate
| logos on spec, for example. see for example
| https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
|
| > _How do I copyright a name, title, slogan, or logo?_
|
| > _Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or
| short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected
| as trademarks. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office,
| TrademarkAssistanceCenter@uspto.gov or see Circular 33, for
| further information. However, copyright protection may be
| available for logo artwork that contains sufficient
| authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also
| be protected as a trademark._
|
| see also https://www.quisenberrylaw.com/ip-discovery-
| blog/who-owns-th...
|
| it seems clear that the paraguayan mickey company is the
| legitimate owner of the paraguayan trademark
| pigeons wrote:
| The copyright has expired for the Steamboat Willie short film
| and a few other things like certain comic strips featuring
| Mickey Mouse. To me that seems different than "mickey mouse is
| out of copyright now".
| kragen wrote:
| fortunately for you, jennifer jenkins, the director of the
| center for the study of the public domain at duke
| university's law school, has written a 6000-word explanation
| of the precise extent to which mickey mouse is or is not out
| of copyright now, including 21 footnotes which add further
| detail, which i linked in my comment above and will link
| again here now for your benefit
|
| https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| It's not. A character by that name from a 1928 animation is out
| of copyright. It is an entirely open question at what point a
| derivative work becomes a new stand-alone work and what that
| actually means for the copyright of the character by the same
| name with a different character design currently used by Disney
| as one of their brand characters.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Sounds like Disney failed to protect its mark in Paraguay over
| many decades.
| aij wrote:
| Mickey was selling foods under that trademark in Paraguay since
| 1835. When did Disney start competing in that market segment with
| their Mickey Mouse brand?
| kragen wrote:
| well, 01935, not 01835. not a lot of paraguayan businesses from
| 01835 survive thanks to the war of the triple alliance
| aij wrote:
| Ack, yes, I meant 1935. I'm on mobile and typoed that in a
| way the spell checker couldn't catch...
|
| Even now in the US I have yet to see Disney selling rice
| under the Mickey Mouse brand in a way that could be at all
| confused with the Mickey rice in Paraguay that I grew up
| with.
| klyrs wrote:
| Neither 8 nor 9 are valid octal digits, please stop that
| darthoctopus wrote:
| This is valid (if somewhat obscure) notation for decimal
| dates in particular, see e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation
| dpassens wrote:
| It's a stupid notation:
|
| > the foundation uses 5-digit dates to address the Year
| 10,000 problem
|
| That just sets you up for the year 100,000 problem. The
| objectively better idea is to just parse years as regular
| integers, something that I'm confident people will figure
| out in the remaining 8 millennia until the problem
| actually hits.
| defrost wrote:
| It's true that they _say_ that: The
| Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero
| is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into
| effect in about 8,000 years.
|
| ~ https://longnow.org/about/
|
| but the truth is more subtle, love it or hate it the five
| digits are part of a campaign to encourage people to
| think about humans in timescales a tad longer than a few
| decades at most.
| shultays wrote:
| It just sounds like a way for people to try showing how
| smart they are while in reality it just adds confusion to
| completely irrelevant discussions, such as this one.
|
| I think the campaign does opposite of what it says. Using
| 5 digits limits your dates to dates to a maximum of year
| 99999. While not giving a fuck, using the digits needed
| to represent a year, works for all years. No one is
| clamping their years to 4 digits when they say '2024',
| they are just using the necessary digits needed for that
| year
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Someday we'll admit that Roman numerals were perfectly
| efficient, and the only reason we switched to decimal was
| because of that DCLXVI guy.
|
| (As of A.D. MMXXIV)
| sionisrecur wrote:
| Why start counting 02024 years ago then? is pretty much a
| small scale arbitrary starting point. Humans have existed
| for longer than that, they could say we are in the year
| 300000.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| How does promotion by a single non-profit talking shop,
| however celebrated or intellectual were its founders,
| make it a "valid notation"?
|
| Five digits don't even make sense in practical anthropic
| terms, since we're obviously headed for a shitload of
| trouble long before the hundreds digit next wraps.
| klyrs wrote:
| Indeed, my joke was written with the full knowledge of
| this farce. To make any prediction about technology in
| use 8000 years from now is just silly.
| tangus wrote:
| To add some context as to why businesses wouldn't survive it,
| that war happened between 00001864 and 00001870, and wiped
| more than 00000050% of the male population (estimates vary).
| miki123211 wrote:
| See Also, Hungry Jack's[1].
|
| They're an Australian fast-food chain, named so because Burger
| King was already a trademark owned by some small Australian
| store, and couldn't be used by the company that the rest of the
| world knows as Burger King.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack%27s#:~:text=Hungry....
| jkestner wrote:
| U-Haul Australia is not associated with the American company at
| all. They just were able to register the trademark first, even
| using the original's brand assets.
| jaza wrote:
| Also Taco Bell, which was absent here in Australia for many
| years, due to a long-running legal battle[1] with local chain
| Taco Bill. The first Taco Bell only opened in inner Sydney
| about 3 years ago (after decades of failed attempts).
|
| [1] https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/taco-bell-and-
| taco...
| chris_wot wrote:
| I know there was a Taco Bell in the Sydney CBD decades ago -
| I ate at it.
| csours wrote:
| I'm at the Pizza Yurt, I'm at the Taco Bill
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Growing up in Indiana we had Waffle House which was different
| than the more famous chain. The chain called themselves Waffle
| and Steak in Indiana.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House#Waffle_and_Steak
| sombragris wrote:
| Paraguayan lawyer here. Paraguayan trademark law states that
| every trademark title is valid for a 10-year term, and then it
| has to be renewed, with a 6-month grace period for renewal.
| Otherwise the trademark expires and it has to be registered using
| the whole process (which can be long).
|
| Apparently, Disney failed to register its trademark for a long
| time while [Paraguayan] Mickey dutifully did so, and also being
| careful not to overreach its trademark categories, things that
| helped it.
| _3u10 wrote:
| I've always wondered how all this mickey branded stuff exists
| since I got here, especially with major brands.
|
| Do you have any insight into why so many signs are in English?
| I can understand maybe foreign brands, but local mom and pop
| stores have giant signs like "50% Off. #partytime" especially
| businesses where no one speaks english.
| sombragris wrote:
| > Do you have any insight into why so many signs are in
| English? I can understand maybe foreign brands, but local mom
| and pop stores have giant signs like "50% Off. #partytime"
| especially businesses where no one speaks english.
|
| That "casual English" is somewhat part of the language of the
| new generation. They're more like catchwords, because people
| don't really speak the language. People, especially young
| urban folks, use it to appear "cool".
| euroderf wrote:
| Same phenom in Finland. But then it gets kinda weird when
| recruitment ads have job titles in English and then the
| body text in Finnish.
| pvaldes wrote:
| People spent more time reading your job offer if is
| explained in their own language. Less friction, more
| eyeball time, that is what you want if you are a
| recruiter.
| euroderf wrote:
| Oh, sure. It's not the Finnish body text that throws ya
| off. It's seeing that after the big, bold English job
| title !
| calpaterson wrote:
| Speaking of - I'm organising a coffee morning for HN
| readers here in Helsinki. Get in touch (email in my
| profile) if you want to come along
| dustincoates wrote:
| The same thing with job titles happens in France, too.
|
| Also, back when tech meetups were more common, you would
| often have where the title and description were in
| English, and the talks in French.
| archi42 wrote:
| Not only tech... I live close to the French border. My
| wife asked me to go to some criminal dinner event thing
| in France, and all the leaflets and the website were
| English. Great! Checking out the details, a small remark
| in a table with the dates and such catches my eye
| "Language: French". Well, maybe that's the French
| date,... Nope, that's for all scheduled events. Kthxbye.
| At least we were not surprised on site, because my French
| c'est no bene.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > That "casual English" is somewhat part of the language of
| the new generation.
|
| It's a near global lingua franca and the Internet has only
| accelerated that.
|
| I wonder how long it will be until English just sort of
| becomes first language in non-native English speaking
| countries with the current trajectory and momentum of
| English-first Llama.
|
| Shame it couldn't be a more cohesive spoken language.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I have observed in dozens of countries that the youngest
| generation now speaks English quite fluently in most of
| the world. Boomers might know only a few phrases, many
| millennials can speak well enough, but quite a lot of
| teenagers now are speaking fluently, using slang and
| making jokes.
| razakel wrote:
| I've heard of kids becoming fluent in English before
| their mother tongue simply from exposure to subtitled TV
| and movies! It's usually countries where the market is
| too small to justify dubbing.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Like Lojban?
| keybored wrote:
| It won't happen except in the imagination of mono-
| lingual-future dreamers on HN (popular idea here for some
| reason).
| altruios wrote:
| Well, speaking in different languages facilitates
| different modes of thinking which results in different
| thoughts. Some thoughts are easier to have in one
| language than another. It takes all sorts to make a world
| and multiple languages means a broader mental space to
| explore ideas.
|
| People against that tend to lean totalitarian. People for
| a monoculture, that is. That is an inherently limiting
| philosophy which can only die out as it narrows the
| 'acceptable ideas' list over time.
| keybored wrote:
| > Well, speaking in different languages facilitates
| different modes of thinking
|
| Sapir-Whorf? Can't that just be put to bed by now?
|
| > People against that tend to lean totalitarian. People
| for a monoculture, that is.
|
| On the topic of languages at least.
|
| Some technologists seem to want to get rid of all
| ostensibly useless things. More than one language being
| one of them.
| FabHK wrote:
| Exactly. Culture obviously influences thinking, language
| less so. Sapir-Whorf has been refuted, except for some
| minor minor areas (names of colours - some people call
| these two colours two different names, some call them the
| same - big deal!; left-right vs north-east-south-west;
| etc.)
| numpad0 wrote:
| no, that's just chomskists getting desperate. Polyglots
| can't be Sapir-Whorf denialists, and Internet is only
| broadening paths to be that, so support for UG theory
| must increasingly become irrational and negative.
| keybored wrote:
| I understand that polyglot means at least three languages
| most commonly, but I'm bilingual and haven't experienced
| this effect. Would it come with my third language?
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm a Japanese speaker with maybe above Japanese average
| but way below professional English and effectively
| nothing else except I've taken _a_ Chinese class, and
| it's currently obvious to me that UG theory is largely BS
| and most of the rest tautological, except I have no
| ability to succinctly point it out in a logical, academia
| accepted language.
|
| There's been too many anecdotal cases I've had that
| aren't going to fit with the basic premise of UG theory
| that there's a hard-wired common human language engine
| with output stage that is language. Like they seem to
| have logical constructions that feels sound but aren't
| going to be linguistically valid in languages I know in
| Chinese, and there are of course phenomena of people's
| attitudes switching along with their languages, etc.
|
| One counter example to UG theory I've come across
| recently is an easily understood phrase "verbalizing
| one's feelings": if UG theory holds some water, feeling
| == thoughts == language, or at least they should be close
| to each others, and we should be able to just `^C dump-
| sumerian<CR>` at any moment at zero cost, and we can't.
| Not that it takes unreasonable bandwidth or storage to do
| so but we _can 't_. Doesn't that perhaps suggest that
| languages are both external yet natural to yourself as
| much as a keyboard is to a man?
|
| Maybe it actually needs exposure to the third language so
| your subconscious can eliminate the possibility that
| you're just not good at the second one, I don't know,
| though I do believe multi(>=3) lingualism is sufficient
| condition.
| keybored wrote:
| You're bilingual like me?
|
| UG means Universal Grammar? I guess you have me pegged as
| a Chomskyist because it makes sense to me. But I can't
| understand you taking a Chinese class made you an
| embittered opponent of some advanced, nerdy linguistic
| theory. For my part I wouldn't be able to understand it
| at a technical level.
| altruios wrote:
| >Sapir-Whorf? Can't that just be put to bed by now?
|
| Said by someone who only speaks one language? Nice Idiom:
| shame if something were to happen to it.
|
| It is SO EASY to prove this (literally just talk to any
| multilingual and watch their entire personality shift
| when they change languages {some languages have larger
| gaps}, they themselves don't often notice the effect)!
|
| >On the topic of languages at least.
|
| At least, you say... hmmm... why does that raise ALL THE
| RED FLAGS...
|
| > Some technologists seem to want to get rid of all
| ostensibly useless things. More than one language being
| one of them.
|
| which is why programmers keep inventing new languages
| (rust), which is the defacto standard everyone uses now.
| /s
|
| Your arguments are as singularly cultured as what you
| argue for.... Which - as it so happens to be - (the
| quality of your arguments) is exactly my argument against
| such a future state.
|
| And on one more note: Dave Ackley has some nifty ideas
| about the opposite of efficiency being robustness instead
| of waste. having a monoculture promises efficiency, but
| with that comes a brittleness that will cut us.
| keybored wrote:
| You didn't pick up on the tone then. I was being derisive
| towards the mono-lingual-future dreamers.
| altruios wrote:
| thank you!
|
| Sorry, tone is very hard on the internet sometimes.
|
| Any sass would be directed at mono-lingual-future
| dreamers.
| aeonik wrote:
| I thought the weak form was pretty solid?
|
| It's pretty obvious to anyone who learns math or
| programming, that once you find the right vocabulary or
| equation for something, that your brain chunks it, and
| it's easier to reason about that domain moving forward.
|
| Of course it's not like if you don't have the word "blue"
| you are color blind, it's just that it's really hard to
| have a conversation about 10 different shades of blue if
| you don't even have a word for it.
|
| The strong version of Sapir Whorf is obviously false
| because everyone has perceptions and feelings that they
| can't put words to.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Depends on the country probably. In some places, at least
| reasonably high English fluency is near universal. It
| wouldn't be surprising if these countries eventually
| became effectively bilingual.
| keybored wrote:
| That's different. GP said "first language"...
| nkozyra wrote:
| Yeah, the multi-lingual stuff isn't what I'm talking
| about. I'm referring to countries where English is spoken
| enough by this generation that it may just leak into a
| first language for their children or grandchildren.
| keybored wrote:
| First language means the first language, the mother
| tongue. Which implies supplanting the existing first
| language.
|
| Kids becoming bilingual is a different thing. It's sort
| of weird if that was what you were talking about.
| darby_nine wrote:
| Eh it'll probably be the de-facto
| public/professional/transactional register and people
| will speak another language at home.
| keybored wrote:
| Based on what? Again we're just throwing eventualities
| out there with no basis in current reality.
|
| People are pretty good at understanding English in
| Norway. But the only factor that introduces English into
| the conversation is when someone does not speak
| Norwegian. In my experience.
|
| People are extrapolating from the fact that people use
| English-borrowed slang to these far-fetched scenarios.
| Yeah? Slang and words have always been borrowed. Not even
| medical doctors speak Latin to each other.
| darby_nine wrote:
| > Based on what?
|
| I never expected to be taken as declaring an objective
| fact; I just notice that this is already how workplaces
| are shaping up. I could easily be very wrong.
|
| Anyway, with the internet the understanding of proximity
| changes. With an increasingly global economy _everyone_
| will be closer to people they only share english with. Or
| maybe mandarin, if you want me to emphasize skeptacism.
| numpad0 wrote:
| No offense, but sometimes an annoying aspects of
| monolingual people(those without substantial second
| language training, not just ** monolingualism
| totaritarianists) is that sometimes the only aspect of
| the concept of a language some of them understand is
| _words_.
|
| About 30% each of English vocabulary is to have been
| borrowed from French. That means the phrase "it's all
| French to me" in free standing could logically imply that
| you _do_ have good idea of what is being said. That 's
| obviously never the case.
|
| That's because dictionary vocabulary is just an asset
| file for a language. It's a major, but still a part of a
| language. Integrating bunch of words into a language only
| inflates that dataset.
|
| Dinitrogen tetroxide(N2O4) is apparently called
| "tetraoksid diazota" in Russian. Do memorizing bunch of
| those compounds in Russian makes you fluent in that
| language? I'd very much doubt it.
| Yeul wrote:
| Pretty much already happening across the well to do city
| folks here in the Netherlands.
|
| Ultimately you have to choose a language that everyone
| can express themselves in and it sure as hell ain't Dutch
| lmao.
| acomjean wrote:
| My mom was a German / English technical translator in the
| US. At one point she said those Germans need to decide,
| English or German. I guess the French from time to time
| make French words for those with English roots.
|
| Though the German word for cell phone, "handy" is pretty
| great.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The French are pretty serious about preventing linguistic
| hegemony and fund measures to slow/prevent it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But the English euphemism for "handy" would sure cause
| some confusion, and potential disappointment. Just like
| the 'merican slang "double fisted" takes a whole other
| meaning in the UK
| em-bee wrote:
| as a native german, speaking english fluently it drives
| me nuts. i mean, "handy" is not even borrowed like
| "computer" but invented by germans as a pseudo-anglicism.
| retrac wrote:
| Dutch is so close to English that at times it is almost a
| dialect of English. "Ik zag de boot zinken." / "I saw the
| boat sink."
|
| The rest of the world can't watch English TV with
| subtitles for a few months/years and come away with a
| passing understanding of English. It's a much steeper
| cliff.
|
| The technical term is diglossia and it's much more common
| when the two languages are closely related. Latin being
| the written standard when the spoken language had evolved
| into Old French or Old Spanish is another classic
| example.
| anthk wrote:
| Old Spanish (12th century, El Cid as an example) was
| closer on spelling to Latin than the 16/17th century one
| from Don Quixote.
| pseingatl wrote:
| It happened in Ireland in the 19th century.
| gwervc wrote:
| Reminds me off all the "teikuautomoOK" (Take out is also
| possible) mentions that flourished on restaurants in Japan
| during covid. There was already a Japanese equivalent that
| existed (oChi chiGui ri) but I guess that was less
| fashionable.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Does that mean that Disneys Mickey Mouse cartoons can't be
| shown in Paraguay due to trade mark infringement?
| yard2010 wrote:
| I think that trademark has to go with a specific product.
| Like there's Apple computers and the other Apple. Or is it
| Macintosh? I can't remember
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Famously, Apple the computer company has been sued by Apple
| the music company many times since its founding, usually
| when Apple Inc. adds or releases new music-related
| features.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Compute
| r
| soco wrote:
| probably less famously Apple the computer company sued
| recently a 110-years old Swiss farmers association over
| using the _image of an apple_
|
| https://www.popsci.com/technology/apple-swiss-trademark/
| GJim wrote:
| The most famous in Blighty is the McDonalds fast food
| chain trying to claim exclusive use of the "Mc" prefix!
|
| Needless to say, numerous Scots and Irish food businesses
| were not very impressed.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49254551
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This was settled in 2007?
|
| With Apple the computer company giving a huge payment to
| Apple the music company in exchange for all of their
| trademarks.
| pseingatl wrote:
| And don't forget MacInstosh stereos and amplifiers.
| smolder wrote:
| That's actually spelled McIntosh, which is different
| enough, I suppose.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Trademarks have categories, e.g. "grocery store", "consumer
| electronics", etc.; that's what the GP's "also being careful
| not to overreach its trademark categories" refers to. If they
| tried to register the trademark for cartoons or animation,
| they'd likely lose it under some prior preference law.
|
| (I don't know that law, I have no clue about Paraguay's legal
| system, but most trademark systems have something that allows
| a prior/established user to kill "aggressive" trademarks. But
| Disney is not an established grocery store, that's the crux
| of this.)
| ghaff wrote:
| My experience when involved in product naming was that
| lawyers tend to very conservative about such things but,
| yes, in theory if you're clearly an unrelated category you
| can reuse an existing trademark. Historically, the purpose
| of trademark was essentially consumer protection to avoid
| confusion about who made something. It's actually quite
| different from copyright in that regard.
| sombragris wrote:
| > Trademarks have categories, e.g. "grocery store",
| "consumer electronics", etc.; that's what the GP's "also
| being careful not to overreach its trademark categories"
| refers to. If they tried to register the trademark for
| cartoons or animation, they'd likely lose it under some
| prior preference law.
|
| That's indeed the case, imho.
| eru wrote:
| Classic New York Times:
|
| > During a recent national holiday, the man inside the Mickey
| mascot costume was warming up in an air-conditioned metal
| container inside the company's factory that serves as his office.
|
| > Ms. Blasco asked The New York Times to withhold Mickey's
| identity from the Paraguayan public to preserve some of the
| "magic" behind the mascot.
|
| Seems all reasonable, until you remember the flimsy
| justifications for their doxxing of Scott Alexander of Slate Star
| Codex fame. See eg https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-
| threatening-my-...
| tangus wrote:
| But they didn't doxx him. Blasco is the owner, not the man in
| the costume.
| amarant wrote:
| Heh, when I lived in Brasil "paraguaio" (Paraguayan) was slang
| for fake.
|
| Makes the term Paraguayan Mickey (or "Mickey paraguaio" as the
| Brasilians would call it) more interesting.
| tkgally wrote:
| The company's website:
|
| https://mickey.com.py/
| pseingatl wrote:
| Panamanian Patricio Jansson won a case against Piper Aircraft and
| levied on Piper's IP in Panama. Lots of mischief ensued.
| FabHK wrote:
| In related news: The people of Dubai don't love the Flintstones,
| but the people of Abu Dhabi do.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Do they love Nermal?
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