Political Theory

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Joe — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:16:01 GMT

Stranger:

Joe:
There could still be a sort of unofficial trademark registration offices or whatever that you paid to register a trademark

Why would you need to register a trademark?

I certainly wouldn't say that you would NEED to, but it could help if one company unknowingly started using a very similar trademark to another company, possibly a competitor, and yet wanted to stay in good standing in the business community. The company who originally started using the trademark could say "hey, this third party office has evidence of us using this trademark as of X date, unless you can prove you registered yours at a different office before X date or buy us out, we will ask for your company to be black listed "

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Jesse — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:38:16 GMT

"They can't, [selling an 'identical' product] would be fraud against the customer."

It would certainly not be fraud. Companies can print whatever they want on their products. If a competitor wants to print the word "coke" on its bottles, there is nothing (besides IP laws) that would stop him from doing so. Fraud wold only take place if competitors claimed falsely that their product was actually bottled by the "coka cola" company. However, they could circumvent this problem by giving their company the same name.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Clayton — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:36:49 GMT

Merlin:

...

I find it funny that while everybody in the “orthodox economic world” praises the imaginary model of “perfect competition”, they’re quick to denounce any competition in producing Porches, which would in fact, mean competition in making the same product (perfect competition), while they uphold strict trademark protection (even if you make an exact same car, you can’t brand it a Porche) which gives us competition in making “similar goods”, i.e. “monopolistic competition”, which they so much loathe for “capitalism” defects. But than again, coherence has never been the other camp’s strong point, hasn’t it?

Excellent point! When consumers select a product, they are not necessarily selecting the producer of that product... they are selecting that thing because they like it at the price it sells. I believe VW has licensed out manufacture of its Beetle and I can envision a free market where no such licensure is required... if the Beetle becomes wildly popular, other producers step into the market to drive down the price of the Beetle even further by manufacturing it in competition with the original producer of the Beetle. In a word - commoditization. Commoditization is the effect of consumer sovereignty.

Clayton -

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Clayton — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:28:46 GMT

JParker:

I'm slowly moving from minarchism to full anarchism, and Kinsella has helped shift my views on IP, but I dont recall seeing anything about trademark and product names/logos.

I guess my question is, how will Coca-Cola be able to market itself competatively if all competitors are able to use their name and design and sell an 'identical' product under the same name without consequence?

I'm divided on this one - as another poster pointed out, this could be simply considered as fraud. However, I'm not so quick to accept that position... it depends on how much burden is laid on the consumer to ensure he's getting what he pays for... i.e. "buyer beware." If you buy a car which has been stolen, is it the guy who sold it to you, or you, who is liable? Who takes the hit? You could say that he defrauded you by not telling you the car was stolen but he could just as well say it's your responsibility to check the title yourself (perhaps he didn't even know it was stolen, so his actions were not illicit).

The essence of fraud - in a natural order society - is theft through subtlety. So, it's really about deceiving someone in the process of transferring the property title to them so that they (reasonably) believe they are getting one thing but, in fact, they receive another. The limits to this get fuzzy fast because a dissatisfied customer can easily claim, "You said I was going to be relieved of my joint pains and this pill just doesn't work!" or whatever, but then the fact may be that the buyer should have checked for himself/herself - from independent sources - whether the seller's claims were true. In other words, since it is in the nature of sellers to talk up what they have to sell and it is in the nature of buyers to talk down what they have purchased, exaggerated claims of "product quality" in itself probably should not be considered fraudulent. Some materially false claim must be made (explicitly or implicitly), as in, "Here is a bottle of 100% Skyy vodka" but, in fact, the bottle contains less than 100%, watered-down Skyy vodka. The long and short: buyer beware would likely be the rule in the market. You can't (successfully) sue someone for talking up their product, only for failure to actually delivered goods as described in the property title (be that an invoice, receipt, advertisement, product label description or even verbal description).

As for images representing brands, I think this is more of the product-quality issue than of the "goods as described" issue - a Swoosh symbol on a shirt is not a claim that the shirt was in fact manufactured by the Nike Corporation. Even the Nike logo on an article of clothing is not such a claim. Fulfilling an order for "Nike brand shirts", however, with shirts not manufactured in fact by Nike Corporation, however, would be fraud, whether the shirts bore logos or not! So, the real issue is what constitutes a false claim on a property title. Knock-offs in a free market can be freely manufactured but the manufacturers and resellers may not fraudulently claim to be Nike Corporation or to be selling goods manufactured by Nike Corporation. While trademarks are one way the market allows sellers to signal their genuineness to consumers, a trademark is far from an objective property title claim.

Consider Rolex - there are many Rolex knockoffs and this is not fraud (in the free market)... and if you buy a watch that looks like a Rolex, it's up to you to verify its genuineness. This could be something as simple as having a Rolex verification hotline that people can call to give a serial # or check for a secret mark or as involved as having a professional Rolex appraiser come and inspect the watch for genuineness before purchasing.

</rambling>

Clayton -

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

DanielMuff — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:27:07 GMT

JParker:

I'm slowly moving from minarchism to full anarchism, and Kinsella has helped shift my views on IP, but I dont recall seeing anything about trademark and product names/logos.

I guess my question is, how will Coca-Cola be able to market itself competatively if all competitors are able to use their name and design and sell an 'identical' product under the same name without consequence?

The fraud issue aside, consumer would probably realize that there are two Forever 21's at the mall and would wonder "why?" Also, I doubt a place like Disneyland would allow two separate companies to operate on their park. For example, I doubt they would allow Coca-Cola, the one headquartered in Atlanta, and say, Coca-Cola, the one headquartered in Miami. Also, I would guess that two separate companies that sold the same product and had the same would eventually strive for product differentiation.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Merlin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:20:35 GMT

JParker:

Makes sense, but what if the company that were copying the item was a distant corporation and refused to submit itself to the arbiter? IE think US/China today. We cant stop the chinese from copying US products exactly b/c they just ignore us. Short of coca-cola's court taking aggressive action against the chinese company, how could this be decided?

Well, besides Joe’s point, in similar cases of “anarchy can’t possibly deal wit this situation”, one must go back to the very reason d’etre of anarchy: it pays to exchange, not to steal. Thus, it could happen a few times that distant company would infringe your trademark with (poorly) pirated products but they’d quickly get out of business, for customers don’t exactly like to be tricked. Or, if they are successful, it means that their customer base is quite poor to put up with such fraud, and hence he’s not cutting into your customer base. So, it will still be fraud, but practically almost totally harmless for your company.

I find it funny that while everybody in the “orthodox economic world” praises the imaginary model of “perfect competition”, they’re quick to denounce any competition in producing Porches, which would in fact, mean competition in making the same product (perfect competition), while they uphold strict trademark protection (even if you make an exact same car, you can’t brand it a Porche) which gives us competition in making “similar goods”, i.e. “monopolistic competition”, which they so much loathe for “capitalism” defects. But than again, coherence has never been the other camp’s strong point, hasn’t it?

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

AJ — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:26:56 GMT

There will probably be trademarks, but questions like this don't really have anything to do with anarchy vs. minarchy. It's not as if in anarchy somehow people become totally different, or judgments made by legal personnel (judges, arbiters, mediators, etc.) will somehow be completely different on all matters than how they are now.

If there is protection required for trademarks, this fact will surely be recognized by the best judges and common-law legal experts - "best" not because they are state-selected but because they are market selected. Ditto for everything else, even IP in general - although I don't think patents and copyrights will have any more than very limited protection (if any) in most spheres.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Stranger — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:12:51 GMT

Joe:
There could still be a sort of unofficial trademark registration offices or whatever that you paid to register a trademark

Why would you need to register a trademark?

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Stranger — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:12:26 GMT

Absolutely there will, and of course trademark producers will go the full length to protect their trademarks from counterfeiters.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Joe — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:01:23 GMT

There could still be a sort of unofficial trademark registration offices or whatever that you paid to register a trademark, and then they would mark the date, and also rule on if anyone after that time registers a trademark that is too similar. If another company goes ahead with that trademark, the registration company could black list it and tell all its customers about the blacklisted company, and then those business could chose not to associate with the rogue business in order to stay in good standing in the business community.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

JParker — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:29:23 GMT

Merlin:
Selling something falsely branded would probably be considered fraud by most courts, with the understandable exception of the case in which a precise copy is being produced. But again, it would be up to private arbiters to decide.

Makes sense, but what if the company that were copying the item was a distant corporation and refused to submit itself to the arbiter? IE think US/China today. We cant stop the chinese from copying US products exactly b/c they just ignore us. Short of coca-cola's court taking aggressive action against the chinese company, how could this be decided?

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Merlin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:15:17 GMT

JParker:

I'm slowly moving from minarchism to full anarchism, and Kinsella has helped shift my views on IP, but I dont recall seeing anything about trademark and product names/logos.

I guess my question is, how will Coca-Cola be able to market itself competatively if all competitors are able to use their name and design and sell an 'identical' product under the same name without consequence?

Selling something falsely branded would probably be considered fraud by most courts, with the understandable exception of the case in which a precise copy is being produced. But again, it would be up to private arbiters to decide.

Re: In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

Marko — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:12:44 GMT

JParker:

... if all competitors are able to use their name and design and sell an 'identical' product under the same name without consequence?

They can't, it would be fraud against the customer.

In an anarchistic world, will there be trademarks?

JParker — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:07:10 GMT

I'm slowly moving from minarchism to full anarchism, and Kinsella has helped shift my views on IP, but I dont recall seeing anything about trademark and product names/logos.

I guess my question is, how will Coca-Cola be able to market itself competatively if all competitors are able to use their name and design and sell an 'identical' product under the same name without consequence?