Stopping the practice of trademarking prefix/suffix

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Apple has made claims on 'i' prefix in the technology sector.

Yet they were unable to do anything against iWatch, becuase it predated their first iProduct. If so why were they ever allowed to lay claim to this prefix in the first place.

Facebook has just sent a letter to Littergram a small company for reporting litter on social media asking them to desist. Clamming the suffix gram. Literally one of the oldest words, in widespread use. Obviously telegram comes to mind.

I'm happy with differentiation and branding. However we offer way too much protectionism to companies and they act like entitled kids. This not conducive with competition.

My view is a tradmark should registered as is. I don't think trademark should cover prefix or suffix at all. First come first serve.

Your thoughts.

The office(s) that take of such things and should be tasked with keeping them sane have been underfunded for a decade, maybe twice that. It's all they can do to process what is submitted. Which if you think about it, was probably the reason for the lobbying to put them in that status in the first place. Democracy and unbridled/unregulated capitalism do not play well together, especially once corporations began to have legal powers once reserved for human citizens (usually via lobbying & donation money, but also via other "trades"). At least, not from the point of view of the consumer - uh, I mean, "citizen".

I'm a competitonist.

One of the tricks of protectionsts is convincing others protectionism is property. However if you study the history of these thing you know otherwise. You will know about the king's monopolies and such.

Nobody is 100% protectionist as it make no sense for these companies to support protectionism that doesn't suit them. One rule for me another rule for another.

In other words "I'm entitled to protection....ahem I mean property...but you aren't...ahem I mean protection."

I don't think anti-trust is the solution though.

Anti-trust is totally backwards. We don't allow competition to exist, then selectively and we try to claw back. What make us such a good judge?

Allow the conditions for competition to exist in the first place.

Capitalism, isn't a complete economic system I don't you why people pretend it is. It is a component of one.

In all countries property has to be defined in law, from prospecting to leaseholds. How that works is rather arbitrary. The is no "natrual" law.

I'm not against capitalism, but we need to have a meaningful definition of property with really competition. Companies will naturally not want to compete, so we shouldn't legislate the option so they can get into bed with government.