Just what is it anyhow about these sizeable corporations and their seeming readiness, nay eagerness, to wage all-out commercial warfare upon tiny little individual entrepreneurs and the like who're just seeking to eke out a rather meagre living...simply because the latter happen to - inadvertently, in almost every instance, there's little doubt - transgress the letter of the law in terms of (generally name-related) copyright infringements?
Have they nothing better to do with their time, than to end up spending considerable time and energy - and all the rest, including monies - in chasing up and hunting down anyone and everyone, who, however innocently and guilelessly, 'just so happens' to cross the invisible corporate line and stray into their territory?
Are they really so insecure - in themselves, let alone their particular product and franchise - that they actually feel genuinely threatened and intimidated even by some little company or often simply twosome or family concern, who as I say inadvertently strays into their business province, and - horror of horrors - uses a term or phrase, however commonplace in regular company, that just so happens to sound an awful lot like theirs?
It would appear so, for what else could possibly explain an outfit as dodgy as Coca-Cola, now increasingly 'implicated', according to various 'experts', in the global (or at least Western) obesity epidemic, pursuing down a couple who've had the sheer temerity - at least initially, until belatedly stopped in their tracks - to go ahead and name their small restaurant franchise 'Innocent Foods' (or 'the Innocent Restaurant')? Or, more precisely, without even bothering to consult their highnesses, the high-and-mighty Coca-Cola company itself, before doing so? As if they'd even have known to begin with! But that's the world some of these corporates with considerable clout live in, they instinctively feel everything revolves around themselves and their commercial concerns, and are almost more chagrined, I've little doubt, that said 'opposition' didn't even realize CC et al's actual prior possession of such names and distinctives as a point of fact, quite apart from thus being an actual copyright infringement as such.
Who'll be next in their sights, the famous 'Innocent Project' seeking to establish some body, New Zealand- or even Western-worldwide, that'd make it easier for unjustly-convicted individuals to contest their innocence vis-a-vis the particular national authorities concerned? Or those who still believe 'innocent' to be a beautiful word redolent and reminiscent of a gentler, kinder, more peaceable (and less driven and commercially-obsessed) era and world - and thus wholly unfit for the likes of a money-grubbing, health-debasing, truth-rejecting, and otherwise thoroughly objectionable commercial entity such as Coca-Cola to peddle in?
Hey, may they - however belatedly - have the gumption and preparedness to swallow some humble pie by taking a leaf out of the 'portfolio' of another company - itself actually once great - that's long since lowered its own standards and principles in the same regards? Yes, I speak now of none other than (the New Zealand division, anyhow, of) Sanitarium...who have themselves debased themselves over recent months (and perhaps years over this and other matters), to take to 'the cleaners', i.e. the Copyright Authority, a little Timaru-based outfit, evidently haling from Great Britain originally, who themselves dared to try to market their own breakfast cereal here in Aotearoa as 'Weet-abix', evidently just a little too close for comfort, in naming sensibilites, to the aforementioned's longtime market winner Weetbix!
Yes, truly 'nuff said!
(Nevertheless, to be continued.)
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