They are not anywhere close to the same sort of thing except if you look at them kind of sideways. To casually interchange them makes no sense.
Furthermore, trademarking generic words and phrases (such as "Apple" or "Orange" or "THANKYOU") is totally legitimate, since the additional requirement for a trademark is that the category or industry is part of the trademark and the protection only extends to that category. No, the flimsiest part of this lawsuit is that AT&T cannot be reasonably said to be operating in the banking industry- but in this case they specifically used the "THANK" word in the context of its partnership with CITI GROUP, so in this specific case AT&T was operating in the banking industry, and using something confusingly similar to CITI GROUP's trademark. and so of course, CITI GROUP is not in this case evil or litigious, but actually legally required to challenge that usage. To not pursue this would be neglect of the law.
Of course, the most annoying part about this is how easy it is to exploit the public's ignorance of how trademark law works to generate clicks and outrage.
> Furthermore, trademarking generic words and phrases (such as "Apple" or "Orange" or "THANKYOU") is totally legitimate
Which really, shouldn't be. Because it couldn't reasonably be argued that a consumer could be "confused" at a simple word or phrase like "thankyou" and therefore being misled into using a different company. If you do try to make such an argument, it displays a level of contempt for the consumer, and is also taking the protection of intellectual properties beyond a reasonable level and moves into the abstract.
I completely understand that people will happily defend things like this because it is "legitimate". I generally question why people feel it's acceptable that it's a legitimate practice however.
Apologies if that annoys you, of course.
It's actually not vastly different, however there is a clear difference indeed. I feel you're just out hunting for something to be pedantic about, lol.