I was sitting at my desk zoning out when it struck me that the pack of Wrigley’s Excel gum I had in my line of vision shared the same name with Microsoft’s Excel. I wondered if there were any IP issues so I did a search on Canada’s IP database, which revealed that there were 500 entries for the word “excel”. I am reminded of the Exxon case, where the court decided a single word is not copyrightable. Since it is an issue of trademark though, the issue would be one of confusion (I think) and there isn’t any confusion here.
Excel is sold under the name Eclipse in the US. According to Wikipedia, Eclipse only launched in the US and other countries after its initial success as Excel in Canada. So why was it named differently? I found no answer to this. I did find, however, that it is not uncommon for the same brands to be sold under different names in different jurisdictions. Sometimes the name change is due to a legal issue, and sometimes it is a business decision.
This led me to wonder:
What are brands legally? Do ‘brands’ exist in law?
If brands are comprised of a bunch of trademarks, then does this mean the contents within the packaging does not really matter? Are brands in fact separate from the product which they represent?
Since Excel and Eclipse are different trademarks in different jurisdictions, can they even be considered the same brand?
How do brands work when corporations (and their brands) are multi-national? How does the issue of jurisdiction come into play with trademarks and IP law?
Here is an infographic on name differences:
https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/brands-different-names-different-countries-infographic
(As an aside, is there a correlation between using velar plosives (the k sound) and brand name recognition? It seems like there are a lot of brand names with ‘K’s and ‘X’s. Excel; Lexus; Axe; Kraft; Kelloggs; Rice Krispies; Kit Kat to name a few. How many major brands without a velar plosive (the k sound) can you think of? Everything that first came to mind for me failed this test: Mc(K)donalds; starbuc(K)s; 3 in Coca Cola)