Tyler Durden on trademarks

Also from the IPKat, there's an article about a new proposal to remove branding from smoking:

The IPKat is no fan of smoking, and would back any move which prevents young people from takng up the habit. As a trade mark lawyer, he finds the proposal intriguing. This would be as close to an undifferentiated market for goods provided by multiple suppliers as we're likely to get - will the market collapse, as economists seem to predict in such situations, or which it remain vibrant thanks to the images built up by previous advertising and mythology surrounding the different brands?

That seems to me to be as close as you'll get to a trademark lawyer admitting that 95% of trademark law is about trying to convince people to buy shit they don't need: