ABSTRACT
Trademark linguistics is an established area of forensic linguistic theory and practice: “One type of case in which linguists routinely testify [in the United States] is trademark litigation, often with both sides offering linguistic testimony” (Ainsworth 2006: 262). Testimony is also reported in Canada (Chambers 2008: 35), Australia (Eades 1994b: 119), Chile (Oyandel and Samaniego 2004), South Africa (Sanderson 2007), and, recently, Great Britain (Heffer 2008a; Olsson 2008a). In the United States, the earliest known linguistic consulting about a trademark was
undertaken by the dialectologist Raven I. McDavid, Jr. (see McDavid 1977: 126) and the lexicographer and dialectologist Frederic Cassidy (WSM, Incorporated, Appellant, v. Dennis E. Hilton and Country Shindig Opry, Inc., Appellees, 1984 U.S. App.724 F.2d 1320). They were joined at about the same time by two eminent American lexicographers, Allen Walker Read and Jess Stein, who testified for opposing sides in the same case (reported in detail in Bailey 1984). Thirty years later, one eminent linguist had testified in so many cases that they formed the backbone of an entire book (Shuy 2002), and at least a dozen American linguists had been active trademark consultants. There is a growing body of scholarly literature (e.g. Adams 2005; Adams and Westerhaus Adams 2005; Baron 1989; Butters 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008c; Butters and Westerhaus 2004; Clankie 2002; Creech 2005, 2007; Dinwoodie 2008; Durant 2008; Lentine and Shuy 1990; Nunberg 2001; Shuy 2008; Tamony 1986). Japanese scholars have written about trademark linguistic theory (Okawara 2006; Hotta 2007a, 2007b; Hotta and Fujita 2007), and there is passing mention in the German context (Kniffka 2007: 29, 139-40), but the scholars of neither country instance actual courtroom testimony.
