I was doing some research into game consoles -- after all, Christmas isn't that far away -- when I came across a page, dated 5 May 2006, on the www.wii-gamer.com site which said that they had heard from the US Patent and Trademark Office that the word wii had been patented by Nintendo. The provisional name for the product had been Revolution.
Sigh. You can't patent words. I know a lot of people think that everything new gets patented, but that's for inventions. Words or logos, or combinations of them, which are used to indicate the origins of goods or services are registered as trade marks (trademarks in the USA). In the example above, it seems from the official database that the application was only made on the 30 April, so someone was quick off the mark in letting them know.
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