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What is in a name -- Club Smart Car or club smart car or...

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I would suggest a spelling error I have found. In your index on the top left hand cornern of your browser it states "Club Smart Car :: Post a reply". The word "Smart" should all be in lower case "smart" rather than upper case.

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"smart car" should both be in lowercase, yes?

I would suggest a spelling error I have found. In your index on the top left hand cornern of your browser it states "Club Smart Car :: Post a reply". The word "Smart" should all be in lower case "smart" rather than upper case.

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I would suggest a spelling error I have found. In your index on the top left hand cornern of your browser it states "Club Smart Car :: Post a reply". The word "Smart" should all be in lower case "smart" rather than upper case.

That line has the first letter of each word Cap'd... Does that override a lowercase noun?

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Technically? "smart", in this case is a proper noun, no? Well - not by the definition of the leading grammatical rule book, The Chicago Manual of Style, which states that "all proper nouns, regardless of position, usuage, or intention, are capitalized consistantly". So the name (if we can call it that), is a conundrum grammatically, in that it is a proper-noun name in reality but is a regular-noun name grammatically. Since it relegates itself back to regular-noun status, it would fall under normal verbiage rules for titling which, again according to The Chicago Manual of Style, states, "If the author so chooses or, in the case of standardized contributions is accorded by convention, to capitalize any regular-noun in the title beyond the first word, then all words in the title must be capitalized. Otherwise, standard sentence capitalization rules prevail"So... by my findings, which are by no means as intelligent as our car's moniker, the title should have "smart" and "car" capitalized, at least in the structure that you have seemingly chosen.Prof. Steve

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So... by my findings, which are by no means as intelligent as our car's moniker, the title should have "smart" and "car" capitalized, at least in the structure that you have seemingly chosen.Prof. Steve

But I would think that in the case of a registered trade mame that is meant to be by its registrar "in lower Case", when refering to such, one must fall to it's registerd form.my thinking, Bud

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By using Club Smart Car rather than Club smart car, would that not distance you at "arms length' away from the registered trademark?Part of the problem is that the general public do not recognise the lower case 's'. Ask 100 people to spell smart car and I'll bet 90+ will use upper case 'S'.

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By using Club Smart Car rather than Club smart car, would that not distance you at "arms length' away from the registered trademark?Part of the problem is that the general public do not recognise the lower case 's'. Ask 100 people to spell smart car and I'll bet 90+ will use upper case 'S'.

I agree, it was I think a talk about is it proper as per the name of the car, to capitalize it. I still think not, but I like to see it that way, but it looks better in lower case for the logo at the top of the page.Bud

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All I was saying, was that according the the grammar "experts" - MB was mistaken in its naming... that by the grammatical definition of a "name" (or proper noun), it can not be lower-case... so that its name isn't a name and should therefor be capitalized (or not) depending on its context. A logical paradox of sorts.

I also wonder if "smart" is trademarked at all legally. People talk of trademarking words - you hear rumors of "so and so gets paid every time someone says 'happy birthday'" or whatnot, but are they true? I would like to believe that to trademark a common-language word, such as "smart", you would need to demonstrate that you originated the word, which clearly they did not. At the very least, I would suppose you would need to capitalize it to emphasize that it is a name at all.

Words really aren't that easy to trademark. I can use "taurus" in any sense that I want, describing anything that I want, and in any manner that I choose - even though Ford would like to dream that they have ownership on the word.

I'm no lawyer though.

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Interesting how fast a non-lawyer can look stuff up.

It appears that I am correct, and then not so much.

the word "smart" can be trademarked (as evidenced by the "TM" they use) but will not be protected (then what's the point). One example of wording I found was on a site called www.patents-info.com, which says:

For this reason, a generic term will not be protected (for example, "Apple"...)

So even thought MacIntosh Computers trademarked the word Apple, it doesn't mean anything really because it won't be enforced. I'm certain the same would go for "smart".

Bahh... way off topic now.

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Steve, love your wit! I have posed the question to a group of writers at my disposal to see what their consensus is with respect to titling a lower cased name. Although I strongly suspect Steve's research and quote from the grammar book is correct and that in a title, "smart car" would be upper cased. However, in a name like "Club smart car", it would be lower cased. Any way... yes, a little off topic, but curious nonetheless.

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It would appear that smart themselves, on their website, get around this conundrum by capitalizing the first word only of titles and leave the rest lower case. Fascinating. Heck, I might just ask them when I speak to them next. *scratches head*

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I doon't undwerstand woute is worge with Smart spelleing? Loeks good to me.

I usedto not be able to spelle Smart, now I's has one

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The French do not capitalize to the same extent we do; things like days and months are all lower case.

In any event, the badging on the car is 'smart' and 'fortwo'; that's what I go by.

What were we talking about anyway? I'm not an elitist for crying out loud, you plainly ordinary gas hogging sod!

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the word "smart" can be trademarked (as evidenced by the "TM" they use) but will not be protected (then what's the point). One example of wording I found was on a site called www.patents-info.com, which says:

For this reason, a generic term will not be protected (for example, "Apple"...)

So even thought MacIntosh Computers trademarked the word Apple, it doesn't mean anything really because it won't be enforced.

I think you would find that if you used the word apple in a computer model name, or smart as a car make or name, you would run into difficulties.

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I agree with the computer - not with the car. Not yet anyway.

After reading futher on the subject, I learned that (in the US anyway) the courts will go to the extent of conducting surveys of the general public to determine if the trademarked name is widely recognized as synonomous with the product. Ask someone what type of product "apple" refers to, and I believe most people would say "computer". As them what "smart" refers to, and I do not believe most people in Canada, at the current time anyway, would say "car".

That appears to be the distinction when dealing with common language words as trademarks. They are unprotected until they achieve a certain status in the community at large.

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Interesting how fast a non-lawyer can look stuff up.

It appears that I am correct, and then not so much.

the word "smart" can be trademarked (as evidenced by the "TM" they use) but will not be protected (then what's the point). One example of wording I found was on a site called www.patents-info.com, which says:

For this reason, a generic term will not be protected (for example, "Apple"...)

So even thought MacIntosh Computers trademarked the word Apple, it doesn't mean anything really because it won't be enforced. I'm certain the same would go for "smart".

Bahh... way off topic now.

Your right and sorta wrong. They CAN Trademark it and make it stick. Here's an example. You have a car named smart. I make a car and try to call it a smart car. I shouldn't be able to do it because it causes confusion. Sort of like Spam. You can't call any other meat spam but you can call Junk Mail Spam because it's not related in anyway.

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you're right... and sorta wrong too :)If you create a car named smart, and you sell say 50 of them in the US. And I create a car named smart and I sell 50,000 of them in the US. Even though you beat me by xxx months, according to how I'm reading the rules on "common language trademarks", it would come down to which one is recognizable by the public at large, if any.You are right - it comes down to consumer confusion... not to what the trademark law is supposed to protect.So still - the trademark, by the virtue of itself alone, does nothing to protect the name smart. Time and marketing will do that.

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you're right... and sorta wrong too :)

Me smells a move and the start of another thread. :BlahBlah:

Bud

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I just had the unpleasant thought that "club" can be a verb or a noun, sort of like "tip". Gulp!

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It appears to me that this in depth and thoughtful discussion is a definite sign that the free beer is all gone :beerchug:

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