Defining what represents a change-of-control is probably the trickiest part of moving this from an interesting idea to a real proposal. Probably, the key factor should be whether or not the senior management and/or the board membership stays essentially the same; new management should be required to earn their own trust from customers that might not follow company news.

Realistically that means no brand lasting longer than about ten years, and the total elimination of lots of century-old brands that people have fond relationships with. It's a stupidly excessive hammer that fails to address the real problems. And it's probably going to suffer the obvious free speech challenges.

> lots of century-old brands that people have fond relationships with.

That's the problem being discussed--the fond relationships are built with entities that no longer exist, and it is argued that current brand practices are deceiving for the consumer side of the relationship and abusive on the producer side.

"Free speech" is a ridiculous charge to level at this. The concept of a government-protected trademark is itself a restriction on free speech in the first place, as are all consumer-protection labeling laws.

> senior management and/or the board membership stays essentially the same

Defining "essentially the same" sounds hard, especially if a series of "small" changes happen over a period of time. Ship of Theseus, anyone?

A series of small changes gives consumers time to react and the value of the brand to naturally evolve, so arguably that's not a problem.

>so arguably that's not a problem.

As soon as you try defining "small changes" and the period of time on which they can occur, it is arguably a problem that will lead to loopholes easily abused by the legal departments of any big corp.

The purpose here is also likely to be very different for different use cases. You might not want the Apple trademark to be transferable as the management changes because you care about their approach to privacy. On the other hand, a consumer who thinks Diet Coke is tasty probably doesn't want to have to look up what brand name they were forced to change to when the CEO quit just to keep buying their favorite soda at the grocery store.