Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 12

= July 12 =

Trademark Transfer
If the trademark of Company A is transferred to Company B does that necessarily mean Company B owns Company A? I am trying to establish whether Monogram Pictures is a subsidiary of Allied Artists International, a claim made on the articles with the single source of the trademark transfer document. But I also found that trademarks of defunct companies can be transferred, and in this case Monogram Pictures is otherwise a defunct company, so Allied may have simply bought Monogram's trademark (perhaps as part of buying their library). Henry chianski (talk) 01:23, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. For example, Chrysler could sell the Dodge trademark to Ford if it wanted to, and Chrysler wouldn't have to be owned by Ford.  A company could even sell the trademark and promptly lease it back, so as to avoid confusion for customers.  Nyttend (talk) 02:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The fact of the trademark transfer should tell you nothing about their corporate relations. Trademarks can be transferred between completely unrelated parties, parties connected only by a contractual relationship (e.g. one is a supplier or customer of the other), or related parties, and without some other evidence you would have no way of telling. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:28, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * See also the complicated story of Rolls-Royce Motors; " Volkswagen Group acquired the historic Crewe factory, plus the rights to the "Spirit of Ecstasy" mascot and the shape of the radiator grille. However, the Rolls-Royce brand name and logo were controlled by aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce plc, and not Rolls-Royce Motors. The aero-engine maker decided to license the Rolls-Royce name and logo to BMW and not to Volkswagen, largely because the aero-engine maker had recently shared joint business ventures with BMW. BMW paid £40m to license the Rolls-Royce name and "RR" logo, a deal that many commentators thought was a bargain for possibly the most valuable property in the deal. Volkswagen Group had the rights to the mascot and grille but lacked rights to the Rolls-Royce name in order to build the cars, likewise BMW had the name but lacked rights to the grille and mascot". It all got sorted out in the end.  Alansplodge (talk) 11:16, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd note in the particular case of a company in administration, it probably isn't uncommon that some key trademarks and perhaps parts of the business may be acquired by some party without acquiring the whole business. See for example Dick Smith (retailer) for a well known case in NZ and Australia. Nil Einne (talk) 12:06, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * See Apple Inc. vs Apple Corps for a modern example. Detailed in Apple Corps v Apple Computer, Apple Inc. owns the trademarks for Apple Corps and leases them back to Apple Corps. Apple Inc. does not own Apple Corps in any way. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:45, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * A trademark is a form of intellectual property, and like any property, it can be sold or transferred from one entity to another without otherwise changing the relationship between the companies. There are even ways to divide the ownership of a trademark, so that different entities own it in different contexts (for example, the convoluted history of the Atari divided the trademark ownership between two different independent companies, one company making arcade cabinet games and one making home video game software; the two companies had no relations with each other) or by geography (in the break-up of large trusts like the Standard Oil or Bell Telephone, successor companies had geographic rights to trademarks, see Standard Oil and Regional Bell Operating Company); when these monopolies were broken up they were actually forbidden from colluding or working together in ways to maintain their monopoly, meaning that there were independent companies with limited rights to a trademark.  You can also have simple sale of a trademark from one company to another, for example when ThinkPad was sold by IBM to Lenovo.  None of those transactions means that a company has been acquired by or is a subsidiary of another.  -- Jayron 32 16:42, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Plans
I'm looking for sociological sources on the change over time, particularly in the last couple of decades, in the acceptability of making plans with someone multiple days in advance, not talking to them about it again, and just showing up without having to confirm that day that your plans are still on, or that someone in those few days makes other plans because something "better" was offered. Benjamin (talk) 02:35, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm somewhat doubting there's actually much research on this but in any case you're asking a very very very broad question because you haven't specified more details. For example the acceptability could easily vary between the case of a person and their boss making a plan for an 2 hour meeting, and a person making a plan for a 15 minute work related catchup with their colleague (during working hours), and a person making a plan for having lunch together with their colleague for social purposes, and a person planning a date night with a long term partner when they haven't had a decent date in a long time due to family, personal or work commitments, and a person planning a date with their serious committed but recent romantic attachment, and a person planning a hook-up with someone their in a casual relationship with, and a person planning to have lunch with their sibling or parent or child for their birthday who they haven't seen in a while, and a person planning to go bowling with a friend they regularly see etc etc. While even if there are studied, you're not going to get one which fits with each specific situation you still need more details to try and work out precisely which study fits best with your specific question. And some of these may be studied together, but often particularly diverse situations like e.g. the work related ones and the personal romance ones aren't going to be. And that isn't even considering that "better" is very illdefined. Nil Einne (talk) 08:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It does sound like they are talking about arranging meetings using a phone where they just decide to do something else on the day. But yes I agree the circumstances can be very different. I'm currently having to schedule things till the middle of next year and some of my friends diaries are so full it can be difficult to get anything in six months in advance. Dmcq (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I am asking in particular about social situations, but any sources would be appreciated. I would be rather surprised if it hasn't been mentioned at all in the sociological literature, even if it hasn't been extensively studied. Benjamin (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * In the old days, we had paper desk calendars and/or pocket diary thingies, and you would write down appointments, and keep them as scheduled, unless a conflict arose, and if you're polite you would give everyone advance notice. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:54, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I know, I know, but is there a source? Benjamin (talk) 17:18, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * For what? How people made appointments in the days before iPhones? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Nowadays, it seems, people give advanced notice, whatever that means. —Tamfang (talk) 07:55, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Before phones or telegraphs, people would need to confirm appointments by mail, which could take some time. So, if the appointment was too soon to confirm by mail, then there could be no confirmation, unless an expensive messenger was used.  After the telegraph was invented, it was possible to send confirmations much closer to the meeting time, but this was also rather expensive, so might only be used for more critical meetings. StuRat (talk) 23:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Note that paper mail (in the UK at any rate) was much more efficient in the 19th century than today. These 1844 London delivery times state that there were seven mail collections and up to twelve deliveries per day in central London. Thus you could post a letter at 8:45 am and expect it to be delivered to a local address at 10 am. Also "Letters posted at the Receiving-houses in London before 6 at night are delivered the same evening at all places within a circle of three miles from the General Post Office; or if posted before 5, they are delivered in the environs the same evening". Further afield, "The NIGHT MAILS FROM LONDON leave the G. P. 0. at 8 p.m., and (with one or two exceptions) arrive at all important towns in England and Wales in time for a morning delivery, beginning before 9 o’clock. The arrival at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin is also in time for a similar delivery". Alansplodge (talk) 11:53, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Interesting ! I knew that some locations in the US once had twice daily delivery, but that many is amazing. StuRat (talk) 21:36, 14 July 2017 (UTC)


 * There was a clickbait article that I didn't read in the NYT a few days ago about this. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 10:28, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Creative Commons
Just wondering, can anybody just slap a Creative Commons license on anything that it can be applied to? For example, if I were to post an image on say, Instagram or Google+, and say that the image is licensed under Creative Commons (e.g. Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International), would it be active? Do you have to apply for a license? Or not at all? Thanks. Zhangj1079 (T&#124;C) 22:29, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can, if it's your work. That's the point of Creative Commons: they're permissive copyright licenses that anyone can use. But, when you upload the image to some place such as Instagram, you're also licensing it to them under the terms in their user agreement that you probably didn't read, which are usually, "You agree we can do anything we want with it and we don't owe you anything." (Yes, a work can be under more than one copyright license simultaneously. A reuser can choose which license to reuse it under. We have an article, but it only talks about it in the context of software.) Now sure, it's great to put things under a CC license if you wish for other people to reuse them, but don't be under the misapprehension that this will prevent Instagram, etc. from doing stuff you may not like with them. See the Creative Commons website for more details. For more information on copyright in general, well, we've got that article, and a FAQ page, although that's targeted towards people editing the projects. The CrashCourse YouTube channel has a short series on "intellectual property". --47.138.161.183 (talk) 00:23, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, only the copyright owner can "slap a Creative Commons license" on a copyrighted work. If you post an image that you did not create, then you cannot put a CC license on it, and unless the copyright owner has explicitly granted you a license of some type, you are in violation of the owner's copyright (with a few exceptions). A CC license is a grant of permission by the copyright owner. You automatically become the copyright owner of a work when you create that work: no registration is required. -Arch dude (talk) 05:16, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Google+ or Instagram might have terms that you signed up to, which contain inconsistent licensing terms, and that may make your attempt to apply different licence terms ineffective. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks everybody! Just to be clear, I was referring to my own work. Zhangj1079 (T&#124;C) 22:41, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, turns out Google has says this: "Our Services display some content that is not Google’s. This content is the sole responsibility of the entity that makes it available. We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law. But that does not necessarily mean that we review content, so please don’t assume that we do," so I'm fine. Zhangj1079 (T&#124;C) 22:46, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Another point: If you have already posted you own works somewhere on the Internet with no License or with a restrictive license, then you are within your legal rights to also post somewhere else with a CC BY SA. However, if you post if here at Wikipedia, our 'bot will likely find the earlier copy on the Internet and will flag the Wikipedia entry as a copyvio, in which case we will aggressively remove the material. We do this because we do not verify your identity as a editor, so we cannot know that you really are the creator of the original. You can avoid this by going back to the original site and adding an explicit CC BY SA there, before you add the material to Wikipedia. -Arch dude (talk) 00:03, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Patrick Henry fake news
On your Wiki page for Patrick Henry, a comment is stated "he purchased up to 78 slaves" is from a fake Wiki imitation site: Wakipedia. The fake website does not list any credentials nor references but appears to have been created solely for the purpose of being a "reference" page and have links to. I request that Wikipedia remove the line about Patrick Henry owning slaves from his biography as it is referenced via a fake website.

http://teachlearntech.com/henry.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.96.14.2 (talk) 22:54, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I changed the title from "locked bios", which frankly, made no sense, and seemed to be about a computer hardware/software problem. StuRat (talk) 23:01, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅. I've removed the statement along with the invalid reference. In the future, you can make requests like this by placing edit semi-protected or edit protected on the article's talk page. —Guanaco 00:08, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Presumably, "locked bios" meant "locked biography", but I can understand the confusion. "Fake news", OTOH, sounds like a Trumped up story, which this isn't. 2001:8003:536A:CA00:45EF:D69D:58E7:E4ED (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I wondered how he could have run a large Virginia plantation without slaves - so had a look at the Leatherwood Plantation article. That includes the line "Patrick Henry's son, John, was given 1,000 acres of the Leatherwood plantation to farm on his own, along with seven of the 42 slaves held there, in 1778.[4]" Then the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorialarticle has the statement "There were also dependencies and slave quarters on the working 520-acre tobacco plantation.[3]" It rather looks as if the man did own slaves! Wymspen (talk) 16:47, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Technically, it is correct that a person who had 4 slaves did have up to 78 slaves since the clarification of "up to" includes all numbers from zero to 78. You could just as well claim that George Washington Carver completed his work using up to 78 slaves. Why not claim that there is up to 78 slaves working in the White House right now? The issue with this is not the necessarily validity of the source material but the weasel words "up to." 209.149.113.5 (talk) 18:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)