Okay, who will say they still haven’t gone too far Now?

Interested in using a phrase like “Feel Free,” “General Knowledge,” “Freedom to do what you want” or “That’s a great idea” but can’t because it would be trademark violation? Well, fear no more, Rentamark.com is here, with thousands of words and phrases in stock, ready for you to license for business purposes. “Thank God”?¢‚Äû¬¢ for Rentamark! I don’t know where we would be as a society without businesses like that helping us stay out of trouble.

Really quite interesting that they’re doing this – claiming words and phrases by a sort of intellectual property eminent domain and then making money from them by renting them to anyone who wants. Rental consists of having a limited, non-exclusive right to use the word or phrase. In other words, you are paying them to suspend the rights that they have claimed under trademark law for no purpose other than to charge money to do it. They are using the law to bring in money without contributing anything in return. Who can justify this economically?

I learned about them in this cute item in Mother Jones Magazine, which was today’s Library Link of the Day.