protecting names

["Watry, Andrew (LNG-MBC)" <Andrew.Watry@domain.elided>]

Concerning protecting the use of certain designations of cars: Under US
copyright principles, you can't normally copyright an idea or just a
particular word or number.  There has to be some element of originality and
expression; it can be pretty small, but it still has to be there.  However,
there are other means to gain proprietary control over words and numbers,
including trademark, trade name, service mark, unfair competition, deceptive
business practices, etc.  A trademark can be almost anything, as long as it
is "used" and acquires (here's the lawyerly phrase) "secondary meaning,"
which basically means it is uniquely identified with one company or person.
For example, AAA, a very short phrase, is I'm sure a trademark of the auto
club, and I'll bet anything Heinz has trademarked "57" in terms of its
variety of products, as has Baskin-Robbins' number of flavors of ice cream
(is it 31 or 33?  I can't recall) or Rolling Rock beer's cryptic use of the
number "33."

So within a particular market, I think you could trademark "164" as
identifying a particular car.  But I agree that "Berlina," which I think
means just "sedan" in Italian, would be a bit tough to uniquely associate
with one type of sedan.  There was flap in 1964 when Porsche first
introduced the 911, which they had planned to call the 901.  Peugeot
objected, cited their preexisting use of the x0x pattern for its models,
such as 103, 203, etc., and felt they had rights to that scheme, and
Porsche's use of it would either cause confusion or lead people to think the
901 was a Peugeot (not bloody likely in my view).  But I don't know what
theory Peugeot made that complaint to Porsche on, other than just pure
business market pressure, which is how most of these things get worked out
in the real world anyway.

Andrew Watry
Berkeley, CA

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