In truth, no, because even if one were to correctly identify this case as being about Trademark law, and complained about how "out of hand" these laws are getting, that would still be ignorant of the fact that trademark law requires companies to vigorously protect their trademarks or risk losing them.

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.

My main point, of course, is on this:

> 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 is legitimate. it legitimately protects consumers from fraud. apologies if consumer protection annoys you.

I believe San Diego Magazine trademarked "San Diego" quite a few years ago. IIRC the trademark included the specific font used by the magazine on its cover. If they had tried to trademark the phrase without limiting it to a magazine with that specific font, I would hope they would have failed to get the registration. I haven't looked at the filing in this case (life is too short for this kind of bullshit), but I would hope it's limited to "THANKYOU", all caps, no space.

whether they are similar enough to cause confusion is for the court to decide. in any case it's close enough for citi group to potentially lose the trademark if they don't challenge