farmdoc's blog post number 536

Each year, the AFL Grand Final crowd’s mainly corporate, so the ‘people’s finals’ are a week earlier, i.e. the Preliminary Finals. Like it or not (and I don’t), in western countries large corporations are dominant institutions. Some multinational corporations are more powerful than national governments. Corporations thrive on their imponderable and opaque jargon and code-words. But they also assert proprietorial rights over everyday language. For example in 2000 Ansett Airlines’ slogan was ‘Go Your Own Way’. (In 2001 it did. Into liquidation.) Ignoring this slogan’s banality and speciousness, it’s beyond me how any corporation can trademark commonplace words. But they can. And do. Ditto symbols. The common or orchard apple, say. According to the electronics mob Apple Inc., nobody else can use an apple symbol without risking litigation. Including Woolworths (photo). I relish two corporate monsters fighting each other. I hope they both lose. Here is an illustrated account of Apple Inc’s jousting with several alleged infringers of its self-imposed hegemony over its eponymous fruit. Cor! I hope Apple and its apple symbol both rot. In hell. In contrast, I have no issue with unique corporate words. For example, ‘Xerox’ and ‘Google’ used as verbs. But Google executives prefer ‘Google’ not be used as a verb since doing so threatens its trademark. As sharefarmer Sharon says: ‘Here’s 40 cents – go phone someone who cares’.