I have been at it, Web Analytics that is, for over 6 years here in my little village, Montreal, which happens to be the second largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris. Since our English-speaking colleagues and friends, mostly Americans, have been leading the field for a long time, a lot of the vocabulary has been established in English. In French, which is by the way a much less flexible language, we have tried to build our own web analytics vocabulary, often getting our inspiration from Englsih.
Our community has recently been hit by someone in France who has decided to enforce his trademark on “Web Analytique”. We, French-speaking web analytics professionals, had just started to agree to use the expression, which is much sexier than many attempted translations.
It is exactly as if we couldn’t use “web analytics” anymore, because it belonged to someone!! How can someone get a trademark on the combination of generic words in a language?
I have no answer; I am just really really pissed off for now…
2 responses to “When Even Language Becomes Private Property”
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Jacques — Please note that I have trademarked the term “pissed off”. In the future, when you use that term, you must indicate that I hold the TM on it. (just kidding). Your tag says it all: Crazyness.
Hi Ron,
The check is in the mail; I have also sent more money, since I intend to use the expression A LOT in the coming weeks…
Thanks for your support.