We are witnessing, some fear, a rampant corporate takeover of our public language. High street opticians Specsavers has had its application approved for a trademark on the contraction “should’ve” (as in “Should’ve gone to Specsavers”), as well as the apostrophe-free version, “shouldve”. Some common words have also long been protected brand names, such as “Windows” and “Apple”, of course, but although this latest seems peculiar, there are precedents: Carlsberg successfully trademarked the word “probably”, and Chelsea football club has trademarked, er, Chelsea, even though it is still a public area of London. Are all the terms in dictionaries and maps one day going to end up privatised?





Well, no. None of this means that if Elvis Costello now sang “I should’ve probably gone to Chelsea”, he would be sued. The point is to prevent the use of the words in advertising similar products or services. Still, some companies are more aggressive than others. Sky TV, for instance, enjoys the curious benefit of owning the word “Sky”. It successfully prevented video-calling service Skype from trademarking its own name, in particular because Skype’s logo resembles a cloud and, as the EU court patiently explained: “clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’”. In a particularly cack-handed move, Sky even sued the makers of new space-exploration videogame No Man’s Sky for use of its word, a case eventually settled after what the head of the game studio called three years of “secret, stupid legal nonsense”.

This all sounds rather silly and predatory in the extreme, but trademarking is necessary to protect commercial interests. In 2012, Jay Z and Beyoncé even attempted to register their new daughter’s name, “Blue Ivy”, under the category of “child or baby products”, prompting mirth at celebrity hubris. But this doesn’t mean that they dreamed of single-handedly commercialising childbirth. “People wanted to make products based on our child’s name and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name,” Jay Z explained. (Except for, maybe, themselves in the future.) Sadly, their application was denied, since there was already an events-planning company called Blue Ivy.

The breadth of English vocabulary still provides rich pickings for companies wishing to corner the commercial use of a noun or verb. You can easily check their availability at the Intellectual Property Office. I am happy to report, for example, that the word “infuriating” is still available for any smartphone or PC manufacturer who wishes to launch an advertising campaign of radical honesty. And for some reason, Southern Rail hasn’t yet trademarked the word “shambles” to describe its train services – though it is already in use as the name of a cider, so perhaps it doesn’t want to encourage the idea that it drives its customers to drink.