You can be like Muhammad Ali – or Alibaba

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LEGAL BRIEF By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. What do you think of when you hear “Ali?” Muhammad Ali Enterprises wants to be sure that you think of them a
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WSkenh999, ibe98765, DLivesInTexas

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This is ridiculous. I say it again: this is ridiculous. Do the Alibaba company directors, or whoever are those behind this obnoxiously silly nonsense have nothing better to do than to listen to lawyers with a seriously altered sense of reality and follow their advice?

Why I am even asking? Obviously not.

There are probably tens of millions of people in the world called “Ali”. Many have businesses named after them. What are the Alibaba lawyers going to do about that? And why start with Muhammad Ali?

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MHCLV941

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How is the sound that sheep make supposed to be written?   For a lot longer than Alibaba Group has existed, it was “baba” but Alibaba Group seems stupid enough to try to sue over this “possible confusion”, too.

Speaking of the written word, who will be in charge of the “40 Thieves”?

It’s a good thing the Swedish group ABBA is no longer active; they’d likely be sued, too.  After all, they use the same letters as the last part of “Alibaba”.

Seriously, this suit not only should be thrown out, but Alibaba Group should also have to pay Muhammad Ali Enterprises’ legal fees.

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It’s Muhammed Ali Enterprises that’s trying to trademark the name “Ali,” not Alibaba.  Alibaba has a right to object if it means they can’t use their own legitimate name anymore for selling items.  One shouldn’t be able to trademark a common name like that.  There are millions of people out there not only with the name Ali, but with the name Muhammed Ali (and Mohamed, and other spellings) who were born with the name as opposed to changing their name to that as Cassius Clay did.  People have historically had that name at least a millenium and a half, and probably more millenia than that.  It’s like trying to trademark the name “Smith” when you changed your name to John Smith and then became famous.  I can see trademarking an entire name of a product, like “Ali’s Favorite Summer Sunglasses,” but one should not be able to just take over a name in isolation.  This is like when T-mobile tried to trademark a color.  Just the color.

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This is a crazy lawsuit, even for lawyers fishing for easy money. I have a feeling it has something to do with China’s sentiments towards Muslims, which is not very nice as we know!

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anonymous wrote:

It’s Muhammed Ali Enterprises that’s trying to trademark the name “Ali,” not Alibaba.  Alibaba has a right to object if it means they can’t use their own legitimate name anymore for selling items.  One shouldn’t be able to trademark a common name like that.  There are millions of people out there not only with the name Ali, but with the name Muhammed Ali (and Mohamed, and other spellings) who were born with the name as opposed to changing their name to that as Cassius Clay did.  People have historically had that name at least a millenium and a half, and probably more millenia than that.  It’s like trying to trademark the name “Smith” when you changed your name to John Smith and then became famous.  I can see trademarking an entire name of a product, like “Ali’s Favorite Summer Sunglasses,” but one should not be able to just take over a name in isolation.  This is like when T-mobile tried to trademark a color.  Just the color.

Ali is a famous American boxer.  Alibaba is a Chinese Amazon-wanna be.   Only an idiot or a Communist Chinese lawyer could confuse the two.

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Personally, I think of Robin Williams.

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