The other week, when South Korea made the news in a way that didn't involve hostilities with North Korea or with another K-pop band, I read the story and shrugged my shoulders, and thought, yup, that's South Korea for you.
The land where copyright infringement is par for the course.
The latest infraction of trademark had a Canadian connection. A Korean coffee company introduced a Tim Horton's knock off, called Tim Morton's.
Not so subtle.
When I lived in Korea, in the late 1990s, I saw backpacks with a label that read Jonsport, similar to the famous California backpack company, Jansport.
In the Seoul district of Itaewan, encountered the following sign for a nightclub.
Club
Viagra was on a bit of a hill, and a long flight of concrete steps lead
up to the entrance.
You have to get up to get in.
In my city, Chônju, a gift shop stole its name from a popular search engine.
So, no, the Tim Morton's coffee doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that they haven't opened a Tim Morton's coffee shop in Korea.
Or maybe, they have?
Every once and a while, I perform a Google search on myself and my blogs to see what comes up. To see if I've actually written something that is worth copying. So far, other sites have sited some of my writing but no one has outright copied it.
Last week, it seems that I had performed my first search since I launched The Brown Knowser, and I was surprised to learn that I had inadvertently copied something myself. Well... not copied. Not really. Because I didn't know that what I had used had already been used before. So it's not really copying.
And what I had copied doesn't infringe on anyone's copyright.
Just what did I use that isn't original? I used the name Brown Knowser.
Apparently, there was a WWII B-24 bomber that also went by the name Brown Knowser. Same spelling. And the pilot of this Liberator was Thomas Frank Brown. No relation, I'm sure.
I tried to find more information about this plane and its crew, but so far to no avail.
Because you can't copyright a title, there's no infringement, so I'm safe. But it's funny what comes up when you Google yourself!
