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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnRTroy" data-source="post: 5083004" data-attributes="member: 2732">I honestly don't think this is the case.  In fact, one of the reasons I've been debating so much in this thread is that so many people nowadays have a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of IP law, or they start foaming at the mouth regarding lawsuits (as in, anybody who is the "victim" of a lawsuit is good and the instigator is always the bad or "villain").  That's why I started going to the USPTO site to find some facts.The key thing is the perception of "generic", which is very subjective.  Granted, Army Builder is a weaker trademark than others, but it does seem to pass the test, at least based on some of the examples I posted way back.The key term I believe is "generic", as in a word that can't be replaced by a synonym.  There is no way you could trademark a single word like pencil, because there is not another good English word for pencil.  A term like "red pencil" is descriptive, but it would also depend on how that trademark is used--a pencil manufacturer might not be able to trademark that--or at least if somebody else had a product of red pencils they couldn't use the trademark to prevent that product from being sold.  However, Red Pencil might be a good name for a gaming company, and thus a legitimate trademark in that context.  In this case I don't see Army Builder as being as generic as Hot Apple Sauce.  The key thing is Trademarks can't be used to prevent language from being used.  They are simply to prevent brand confusion.  The Playboy case S'Mon invokes involves a concept called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use" target="_blank">nominative use</a>, which means Trademarks can't be used to prevent discussion of the product itself.  In the Playboy case, the Playboy Playmate had the rights to indicate she was a playboy playmate, because there is no way to describe that elsewhere.I'm not sure Army Builder can fall under that, specifically because there are many synonyms that can be used.  You can call it an army maker or an army constructor and that would still convey the means.  You can't tell me that you absolutely can't communicate what your software does without using the word combo "army builder", because there are several effective synonyms.  That is not the case of "playboy playmate", because the centerfold has the right to mention where she worked.I think the key thing is a competing product can't TITLE itself Army Builder, you might be able to say "The software is used to build or create armies" in describing it, but the key thing would be the title--because even if you give your software away for free this may count as trade.  At least that's how I interpret the law, and others appear to agree with me.   Anybody creating a free tool IMO would need to make sure they don't use the Trademark in the Title.  Trademark Law can be abused by some--Monster Cable tried to sue others who used the name including Monster.com and Pixar for Monsters, Inc.  But they have a history of being over-litageous.  But I don't think the general trademark laws are bad--in fact out of all three IP laws, they are very good.  They protect abuse--without them anybody could use the terms and cause consumer confusion.  I don't want to Eat Piratecat's version of Chef Boyadee, I don't want to read Joe Shmoes version of Superman, and I don't want to use the Nigerian Hacker's version of Windows 7.</blockquote>

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