Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Martinus]

That's a good point. If I am not able to free ride on the reputation of a trademark (which was built over "only" several years or decades) why should I be able to freeride on the reputation of a controlled geographical designation, which was built over generations or centuries?

[Martinus]

@garbon: so where's the harm in me branding my drink "Coca Cola" if the consumer can't tell the difference in taste?

[garbon]

That's a good point. If I am not able to free ride on the reputation of a trademark (which was built over "only" several years or decades) why should I be able to freeride on the reputation of a controlled geographical designation, which was built over generations or centuries?

Why should Chipotle be able to free ride off the reputation of tasty burritos with their flavorless crap?  Perhaps Chipotle should be called burrito-style food.

[garbon]

@garbon: so where's the harm in me branding my drink "Coca Cola" if the consumer can't tell the difference in taste?

The name is legally owned via trademark and I don't think Coca Cola has ever been used to describe everything in its class (although I'm aware of the coke bit).  On the other hand - champagne and feta have been and in many places continue to be used to describe everything in their particular class. It seems artificial to restrict those classes down to singular items that are produced by a certain group of individuals in a certain place, who aren't even engaged in a common enterprise.

[Ideologue]

That's a good point. If I am not able to free ride on the reputation of a trademark (which was built over "only" several years or decades) why should I be able to freeride on the reputation of a controlled geographical designation, which was built over generations or centuries?

For the same reason that The Odyssey cannot be copyrighted.  Because very old intellectual property, including potent potable production techniques, belongs to the world.

Now, bear in mind I've never had any problem with requiring the name to meet certain conditions, just do not agree that geographical origin (which is internal protectionism) should be one of those conditions.

[The Minsky Moment]

Don't most edible products tell where they are made? 

Country of origin only, and then only on the back label

Besides if the consumer ends up unable to tell the difference between the two, where's the harm, where's the foul?

The foul could be the consumer is able to tell the difference and ends up with something other than what he wanted to buy.
Or that the consumer ends up thinking incorrectly that "cognac" is really cheap fire water.

Again these are the exact same rationales that apply to trademark generally.
For some reason you haven't really articulated you think these protections should only be available to those cooperative ventures of multiple persons called "corporations" and not to others.

[garbon]

For some reason you haven't really articulated you think these protections should only be available to those cooperative ventures of multiple persons called "corporations" and not to others.

It seems illogical. Feta has been used for quite some time to describe food items that were not made in Greece. Seems a bit artificial to impose geographic and process (when something like these goats have to have eaten this particular form of grass) restrictions after the fact.  And I think with a trademark behind a corporation, there is less of a sense that one is simply pandering to the interests of particular EU citizens over others.

[The Minsky Moment]

For the same reason that The Odyssey cannot be copyrighted.  Because very old intellectual property, including potent potable production techniques, belongs to the world. 

Trademark and copyright are not the same concept nor do they have same rationales or application.

A "potable production technique" cannot be trademarked or protected from use of others by an AC-type scheme.  Anyone can use the methode champenoise (except in the EU they have to call it methode traditionelle - which IMO is a bit much), whether they are from Champagne or anywhere else.

[The Minsky Moment]

It seems illogical. Feta has been used for quite some time to describe food items that were not made in Greece.

Using the trademark analogy, that might be grounds for denying protected treatment, just as prior use of a mark by others may be grounds for rejecting a trademark app.

Seems a bit artificial to impose geographic and process restrictions after the fact. 

If anything the process is far more "natural" than trademark -- the restrictions are based on historical practices going back many years, all prior to the fact.

And I think with a trademark behind a corporation, there is less of a sense that one is simply pandering to the interests of particular EU citizens over others.

There is the sense of pandering to corporate interests over all other kinds of collective interests.

[Ideologue]

For the same reason that The Odyssey cannot be copyrighted.  Because very old intellectual property, including potent potable production techniques, belongs to the world. 

Trademark and copyright are not the same concept nor do they have same rationales or application.

No, I know.  But they're both IPs.  Maybe it's a bad example, but I wanted to use something universally known.  How about "heroin cannot now be trademarked"?

A "potable production technique" cannot be trademarked or protected from use of others by an AC-type scheme.  Anyone can use the methode champenoise (except in the EU they have to call it methode traditionelle - which IMO is a bit much), whether they are from Champagne or anywhere else.

You probably know better than me, but I thought production techniques such as that could be patented (if they were novel, which they are not in this case), another form of IP.  IP law: not my specialty at all.

[The Brain]

It's just the old protect inefficient industries thing so beloved of underperforming countries like France.

[The Minsky Moment]

You probably know better than me, but I thought production techniques such as that could be patented (if they were novel, which they are not in this case), another form of IP.  IP law: not my specialty at all.

Certain kinds of production techniques may be patenable, but ones like the methode champenoise or continuous distillation, even if otherwise patentable, would suffer from the defect that there is prior art going back centuries - which is in the very nature of anything they might be covered by appellation protection.

[Sheilbh]

Zoupa&Shelf: do you believe that Kobe beef tastes different because of how their fur was brushed and because the bulls got blowjobs from Japanese schoolgirls or whatever?

I've never had Kobe beef so I can't comment.  Does a single malt protected Scotch taste different from Sainsbury's own brand whiskey?  Yes.  Similarly there's is a world of difference from a Melton Mowbray porkpie and a mass-produced one.

Of course the process of production has an impact on taste.  It would be extraordinary if it didn't.

I personally find the terroir argument less convincing but I think it's part of a whole.  I think it's about the continuity of that produce coming from that land, the cultural heritage (travel around any part of Italy, or France for an example - I'd even include English pubs' beer in some cases) and certain traditional techniques.  Of those only the techniques of production can be replicated elsewhere - and even that's not possible in a case like Roquefort which must be matured in the Roquefort caves.

[citizen k]

Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced "mobs" and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging "class warfare," while Herman Cain calls them "anti-American." My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don't deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city," a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement's actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters "let their freak flags fly," and are "aligned with Lenin."

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it's part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

And then there's the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous dictum that "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you'd think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a "collectivist agenda," that she believes that "individualism is a chimera." And Rush Limbaugh called her "a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."

What's going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street's Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They're not John Galt; they're not even Steve Jobs. They're people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they're still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can't bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who's really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America's oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

[DGuller]

Krugman used "oligarchs".    That's a protected name, I came up with it first.