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In trademark law, commercial entities may assert a proprietary interest in images as well as words and sentences. No trademark may be "generic," and even trademarked images have to mean something other than merely "a kind of thing." Thus, a marketer of bananas could not prevent others from using all images of bananas in their advertising, though they could own a particular unique image of a banana (say, a blue one, half peeled). Thus, the use of "checkered patterns' (e.g., ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄) in product marketing exemplifies how the semiotic sense of signs can be crucial in trademark litigation. Checkered patterns are widely used ornamentally in packaging and advertising, and the issue of the acceptability of a particular pattern as a legitimate trademark depends in part upon the relevant public's ordinary analysis of the meaning of the pattern in relationship to the product being identified. The issue of genericness arises because the checkered pattern in itself has identifiable meanings that extend beyond that of particular products: legal and semiotic issues arise as to whether a particular checkered pattern will be understood as signifying (1) a particular brand of products and services or (2) the general class to which the product or service belongs.My analysis of commercial advertising and product labeling identified four fields in which the checkered pattern is generic in the United States: (1) automobiles, (2) food and food service, (3) tile floors and walls, and (4) cleaning products and services. Marrying basic semiotic analysis and lexicosemantic pragmatic research within a legal framework, I have relied on the methodology that lexicographers normally use in studying names and common nouns: inductively analyzing systematically collected data.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6_13

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