VERIZON

A while back, I sent Verizon an e-mail expressing my disgust with their trademark suit concerning the use of the phrase, "can you hear me now?" by union representatives. Just to follow up, here is the completely predictable response from the good folks at Verizon customer service:

Thank you for contacting Verizon Wireless through our website.

We are sorry that you feel this way about the lawsuit. However, "The company has spent millions of dollars in advertising and public relations to establish the phrase 'Can you hear me now' as a
symbol of our network's quality and our relentless efforts to continue to test and expand our coverage. We will take action against any company or other organization that infringes upon our trademark
and damages the valuable brand we have created."

As part of our Worry Free Guarantee you'll enjoy the largest, most advanced nationwide wireless network. Please write to us again through www.VerizonWireless.com if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

XXXX

Verizon Wireless Customer Service

I've left the formatting as it appeared in the original e-mail.

I still do not understand how it is possible that trademark law allows for the threats of these kinds of bogus lawsuits. No, scratch that: I understand how it is possible in a causal sense, but I think that it is simply wrong nonetheless.

However you come down on the precise legal questions, it remains clear that these kinds of trademark suits are an attempt to place a prohibitve price on rhetorical moves that have developed through the history of human communication (criticism, irony, mimicry). These moves are threatening partly because they are defiant of corporate power, and that may be the primary fact here, but they are also threatening because of the theory of brand identity currently in play in both advertising agencies and company strategy meetings. That theory is that companies need to create a set of Pavlovian emotional reactions inside of consumers and potential consumers, a set of reactions of favorable affect toward the services that are sold by the company. The "delivery device," one might say, of those affects is a phrase or set of phrases that is part of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. And, as Verizon's talking points above make clear, anything that changes or seeks to change or even to call into question those emotional reactions will be interpreted by the company as "damag[ing] the brand." The harm to language here is the idea that words are "delivery devices" that can be owned by particular companies. Words as a signal for the genuineness of a particular product are one thing (the old theory of trademark, if I understand it); words understood as delivery devices for positive affect are another thing altogether -- much more insidious, in part because the claimed reach of trademark law (the realm of behavior that can be priced out of the reach of ordinary folks and even ordinary folks in combination) is much greater.

Words are not simply delivery devices for positive affect. They are part of the structure of human communication. And in the contemporary world, human communication is rightly used for criticising corporate power -- and you should believe this even if you generally like corporations, as long as you admit that the use of power needs to be monitored or it will be abused. The attempt to close these byroads of communication should be met with absolute and unwaivering hostility. There are of course a lot of additional distinctions one might make in this area; it is clear that some time, place, and manner restrictions (as described in First Amendment cases) have justifications, for example, even if they can be described in the same way I have described these bogus trademark lawsuits here. I am not making a particular argument for fine legal distinctions. What I am saying, though, is that it must remain a clear and fixed point that bullying trademark suits that target certain historically-developed rhetorical moves are simply wrong and must be resisted.

See also my posts here and here.