WTF? P&G Wants to Trademark L.O.L.

[muriel_volestrangler]

If you thought all those texting acronyms couldn't be yanked out of the digital commons and trademarked, forget that. Procter & Gamble Co. has filed for trademarks on household and personal-care use of LOL, WTF, NBD and FML. FWIW, there's no indication products bearing those names exist yet, and P&G doesn't have trademark approval. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has sought clarifications from P&G, which has until January to respond.

Precise uses remain TBD, as P&G declined to provide TMI. But competitors who might want to use these acronyms may now face FOMO. BTW, despite those old untrue P&G-Satanism rumors, NBC reported in 2012 that LOL does NOT secretly stand for "Lucifer Our Lord."

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/marketer-s-wtf-p-g-trademark-l-o-l/314693/

(I'd never seen 'FML' before - "fuck my life", apparently. Hard to see how you work that into a positive brand image, though)

[underpants]

1. Lucifer Our Lord gets an LOL from me

That harkens back to KISS standing for Knights In Satan's Service....which Gene Simmons would license if it put money in his pocket

[Croney]

2. I only had to look up one, FOMO. I have a

relative who insists that LOL means lots of love. She INSISTS. This leads to her posting on FB things like, "I'm so sorry for your loss, we will all miss him so much. LOL"

[unblock]

3. before the web, we used it in bridge discussion groups to refer to little old ladies

[rurallib]

4. One would think a company like P&G wouldn't try stupid tricks like this knowing

that it would open them to scorn and ridicule.
Guess they will learn.

I remember a few years ago when they tried to avoid a tax in Great Britain by arguing that Pringles was not food.

[CaptainTruth]

5. They might succeed in registering them for a particular class of goods...

... which is what you have to do when you register a TM. The registration applies only to the classes of goods specified.

For example, Chevrolet can TM "Volt" as the name of a car, but that doesn't prevent Duracell from selling "9 Volt" batteries because they're a different class of goods (& in that case Volt might be considered a generic descriptor).

It also doesn't prevent anyone from using the word "volt" in general conversation, just like these registrations (if granted) would not prevent anyone from using LOL, WTF, etc in general conversation.

It can be fun (if you're a geek like me) to browse TESS (the govt TM database) & see what TMs companies have applied for. It can give you clues about the new products they're working on long before any info gets leaked to the press.