Comment by sombragris

Comment by sombragris 5 days ago

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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 5 days ago

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.

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  • sombragris 4 days ago

    > 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".

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    • nkozyra 4 days ago

      > 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.

      Reply View 39 replies
      • keybored 4 days ago

        It won’t happen except in the imagination of mono-lingual-future dreamers on HN (popular idea here for some reason).

        Reply View 25 replies
      • pseingatl 4 days ago

        It happened in Ireland in the 19th century.

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        • broken-kebab 3 days ago

          It's completely different thing: Ireland was a province loosing its language to metropoly. FWIW English wasn't even accepted as global lingua franca back then.

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      • throw__away7391 4 days ago

        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.

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        • razakel 4 days ago

          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.

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      • Yeul 4 days ago

        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.

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    • euroderf 4 days ago

      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.

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      • calpaterson 4 days ago

        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

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      • dustincoates 4 days ago

        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.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • archi42 4 days ago

          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.

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      • pvaldes 4 days ago

        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.

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        • euroderf 4 days ago

          Oh, sure. It's not the Finnish body text that throws ya off. It's seeing that after the big, bold English job title !

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  • gwervc 4 days ago

    Reminds me off all the "テイクアウトもOK" (Take out is also possible) mentions that flourished on restaurants in Japan during covid. There was already a Japanese equivalent that existed (お持ち帰り) but I guess that was less fashionable.

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wodenokoto 4 days ago

Does that mean that Disneys Mickey Mouse cartoons can’t be shown in Paraguay due to trade mark infringement?

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  • eqvinox 4 days ago

    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.)

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    • sombragris 4 days ago

      > 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.

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    • ghaff 4 days ago

      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.

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  • yard2010 4 days ago

    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

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