Why should companies live forever? If they have 'personhood' then they need to die at some point... otherwise we have cancerous monstrosities we see currently. That is what happens when any component of something larger (society) lives too long, hogging resources while killing the host.

20 years for trademark is negotiable. That there needs to be an expiration date is not.

As somebody who buys products, perpetual trademarks are useful to me. I want to know who I'm buying from.

The problem I have is with trademarks being used as nouns but somehow not becoming generic. I searched "Velcro" on Amazon.co.uk. The best selling item is Velcro branded "Stick On". What even is a "stick on"? No reasonable consumer would identify that as a hook and loop fastener without context. "Hook and loop" isn't even written on the front of the packaging. The "Velcro" trademark is clearly functioning as a noun, which means from an ethical point of view it should be generic.

>As somebody who buys products, perpetual trademarks are useful to me. I want to know who I'm buying from.

You are a mark; you are a rube; you have been rooked. there is absolutely nothing about a trademark that remotely implies a continuity of ownership, certainly not of production quality. see what happened to pyrex, brand loyalty to their trademark from rubes is the only thing going for them any more

If there were no trademarks you wouldn't even know this happened.

It sounds like the only companies you are familiar with are ones large enough to capture markets, bribe politicians, and write regulations in their favor.

Well, small and mid-size businesses are easy to miss if you work from home or live in a big city. They don't wield anything like the kind of power you describe. But they account for most of the US GDP and private sector jobs. You may want to stop and consider the value of multi-generational family-owned businesses.

>But they account for most of the US GDP and private sector jobs.

wrong again, small businesses do not account for even 45% of US gdp. sorry to hear your jet ski rental isn't doing well

Most companies don’t live forever. But I don’t see any value in having a mandatory expiration for trademark, and several downsides. If the TM expires on a popular brand of beer, for example, then there will be competitors flooding the market with other beers that may or may not actually have the same taste or quality. How does that benefit the public? It sounds more punitive against companies than positive for the public.

because of the fraud that enables. If I'm used to getting quality widgets from bob's widget factory, I don't want to go to the store one day and buy a bob's widget and have it be something completely different.