Increasingly, it seems that the news of trademark law suggests more and more a subject matter control or “suggestion of” a topic than it does a real distinction between the origin of different goods and/or services. For example, you can substantially forget any word or symbol that is reminiscent, in any way, of any college or professional sports team, even if the word or symbol has never been used to identify that team, and even if the nature of the “mark” leaves no reasonable person in any way confused as to origin.
Now we have an example from the world of entertainment (http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/warner-bros-trademark-lawyers-target-38624). Admittedly, we are not the world’s greatest movie fans, but I doubt that the term “Golden Ticket” would even conjure up a memory of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” to me. And if it did, would we really be confused that a craft brewer and Warner Brothers were trespassing on each others turf? Hard to believe. What we’re seeing appears to be the increasing capture of the English language by trademark interests, and whether the buying public is really aided in assessing the true origin of goods and services remains a very open question. Does this stop when we run out of words?