Over the last several days, I have been reading the “discussion” of trademark law that has been taking…

Over the last several days, I have been reading the “discussion” of trademark law that has been taking place in a blog neighborhood near you. As some of you may know, in a past life I was an Intellectual Property……

Personally, I believe that everyone has the right to protect his intellectual property. But it appears that O’Reilly may not have protected his. A genericized trademark is “a trademark or brand name which is often used as the colloquial description for a particular type of product or service as a result of widespread popular or cultural usage.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark
I have read that in America and other countries, for years, there have been numerous conferences and other events with “Web 2.0” in the name. http://blog.softtechvc.com/2006/05/the_web_20_lega.html
If this is true, then since O’Reilly and his company did not previously enforce their rights and send Cease & Desist letters to *those* conference organizers, it seems to me that “Web 2.0” has been allowed to become a genericized trademark. Hence, trademark rights may no longer be enforceable or at least it may be difficult for O’Reilly and crew to now legally enforce their rights. A long list of other genericized trademarks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks
Also, see the very brief opinion of The Trademark Blog on this topic: http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/2006/05/web_20_v_web_20.html

Trade mark friendly, Web 2.0 friendly, protects the O’Reilly conference name and still shares the ‘Web 2.0′ pharse with everybody else – how hard can this be?

They have to back down. Battelle starts to in a comment on his post http://battellemedia.com/archives/002596.php — though they’ll have to get CMP’s buy-in, which could take real time.