For fun: How to read a haynes manual

harryhound

Once upon a time circa 1970 the Sunday Times had a competition to find Britain's best known brand name - using a postal equivalent if what we would now call "Spam", an engineering company in S.Wales got "Mole Grip" to win the competition.:rotfl:

These brand names get taken very seriously, and if their owners allow people to use them without acknowledgement they can become "generic" and anyone can use them (Nylon is a good example - calling the stuff polyamide all the time might be a bit of a mouthful. though polyester seems to have replaced the trade names Dacron, Diolen, Tergal, Terylene, and Trevira for fibres.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon

I once wrote, again back in the 1970's, in an instruction leaflet for using a product "rub with a little Vaseline". and got a snotty letter from Cheseborough-Ponds lawyers, who expected me to add a free advert for Vaseline to the leaflet. Just adding [FONT=&quot]® or ™ [/FONT] was not good enough, so I had to reprint the leaflet with "petroleum jelly" instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly

The sad thing is that if you invent something useful, a patent gives you protection for (say) 15 to 25 years, and that is after you have explained in the patent application how you did it.
However if you invent "Harry Potter" you get to control him for your life plus 70 years, which seems completely over the top in comparison. in fact if you continue to trade on "Harry Potter" stuff - the business might have rights to "Harry Potter" for ever.

Be careful how you go using a term "invented" on here for claiming other people's Tesco points:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-find-number?detailsrequested=C&trademark=2525688

;);)

From an internet blog:


75 Years and counting!

The Vise-Grip Locking Pliers were developed more than 75 years ago by Vilhelm "Bill" Petersen in 1924.
European Locking Pliers In French, a pair of Vise-Grip locking-pliers are called une paire de pinces !tau.
In the United Kingdom, there is a brand of locking pliers called Mole-Grips (TM).
written on one side MOLE Reg'd Trade Mark and on the other- Self-grip Wrench Newport Mon. Gt. Britain On a recent trip to England I went searching for a pair of Mole-Grip locking-pliers, I discovered that Stanley of UK bought the Mole-Grip name.