Filed under: Trends
BMW suing Nissan over the use of "M"
Speaking of automakers suing each other over the
alphabet, Nissan, which sued Audi over the use of the letter "Q," now finds itself in the hotseat. BMW is
seeking $260.7 million in damages over Nissan's use of the letter "M" in a recent Canadian advertising
campaign with the tagline, "The M is coming." The campaign was promoting the impending launch of the
Infiniti M35 and M45. While the Canadian court wouldn't grant an injunction against Nissan continuing to run the ad, the judge did acknowledge the importance of the letter "M" to BMW and promised to hear the case as soon as possible.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Gary 8:49AM (2/01/2006)
Are they going to sue Sesame Street, too?
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Mike from Scarborough 8:49AM (2/01/2006)
Ya! was up with that comertial?,I thought.I saw it a while ago Up here and thought it was infringing a little on the Munich Group.
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Aetius 8:55AM (2/01/2006)
HAHAHAHAH.
Look out kids. Don't recite the alphabet. You just might get sued by an automaker.
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Bashir 10:08PM (10/02/2007)
good one
Jason 9:03AM (2/01/2006)
This is when Nissan replies: "Hey, let's talk about that Z-series you make." and BMW gets all quiet and defensive.
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Ron21 9:07AM (2/01/2006)
When did BMW patent the letter M ?
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J-Mendez 9:13AM (2/01/2006)
LOL Sesame Street! This lawsuit was brought to you by: The Letter M....
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Roy Charles 9:21AM (2/01/2006)
All of a sudden BMW has a problem with the "M".
They did'nt care the last body style. Gee, I wonder why?
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DJ 9:25AM (2/01/2006)
I want the rights to the letter "X". Then I can sue just about everybody including Microsoft's X-box, BMW's X5 & X3, all Acura vehicles, Nissan's Xterra, ESPN's X-games, Lincoln's new MKX, Jaguar's X-type, every maker of xylophones and best of all where the real money is, every PORN site operator and distributor!
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Bashir 5:22PM (10/04/2007)
then bmw might sue u for the "x" 5 lol
bernie 9:26AM (2/01/2006)
Next somebody will trademark a color or a shape. Has UPS tried to claim "brown" yet?
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GrowUp 9:43AM (2/01/2006)
This is all getting to be laboriously stupid.
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Whydrive 9:46AM (2/01/2006)
Nissan dropped the lawsuit against Audi - if Nissan had won against Audi, that will directly support BMW's case against Nissan. What goes around comes around.
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Exile 9:59AM (2/01/2006)
Im suing you all for using puncuation. I own all "quote" marks and those "..." things. (didnt you know?)
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DJ 10:03AM (2/01/2006)
You know what the real irony is here? By BMW suing Nissan/Infiniti over this, they are generating even MORE publicity for the launch of the new cars! Same thing happened when Toyota launched the Lexus line and was sued by Lexis/Nexis. Maybe there are times when companies should just keep their mouths shut...
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fuscob 10:36AM (2/01/2006)
#8: Haha, yes actually. UPS has owned the rights to the color brown for a while now.
http://www.ups.com/trademark/trademark.html
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Bryan 10:38AM (2/01/2006)
More discussion of crazy colors and letters patented in this old post from Boing Boing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury_trademarks_t.html
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Hung2 11:15AM (2/01/2006)
Hey Fellow Bloggers - lets just gobble up all the remaining Alpha numbers so the the car manufactures will actually have to think of REAL NAMES for their products, like they used to. Then of course we might get stuck with names like "Vigor" again. Oh well....
Bring on the Y5!!
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Car-la 11:20AM (2/01/2006)
This is not the first time that BMW sues someone for using the letter M. Some years ago, Mercedes-Benz was the lucky one to receive BMW's attention with the M-Class, which is why all M-Class models now carry the ML moniker, whereas Mercedes had originally intended to call them M320 etc. I don't know if this was brought to court in the US, but if so, BMW has a pretty good chance of winning this against Nissan.
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Domo 11:33AM (2/01/2006)
M&M is the next, then McDonald
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