OT corporate renaming, trademarking, kfc

1. Lucky and GoldStar Co., Ltd became LG Electronics

Korea?s LG started in 1947 as Lucky, a chemical company making cosmetics and plastics; it later started another brand called GoldStar, which sold electronics. The brand changed its name to LG in 1995 to elevate its brand for the Western market. It also adopted the same-initialed slogan, ?Life's Good.?

also says, in a link from another link, that Kentucky trademarked the word Kentucky and they wanted Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Kentucky Derby, and sellers of Kentucky Bluegrass to pay a licensing fee. I didn't think that was possible. To trademark a single word, especially a long-established word that's used all over the place**. If they wanted to trademark Kayntukky, that would be fine, but Kentucky?

"Update***: In November 2006, KFC and the State of Kentucky finally reached an undisclosed settlement over the former?s use of the trademarked word ?Kentucky,? and the restaurant chain announced it would be resuming its former name of ?Kentucky Fried Chicken.?"

**If this be possible, why shouldn't I just trademark the name Micky, and then make the producers of Micky Mouse cartoons pay me a royalty every time a cartoon is shown.

Hmmm, an uniformatively-named link on the page above, "More information about this page" goes to another article in Snopes that says, not at the start but in the middle of the article, that this was a joke. Is Snopes trying to ruin its own reputation? Apparently.

Apparently anything in the Fact Checks > Lost Legends is false but nothing in the phrase Lost Legends implies that to me.

I wrote them but they say they get loads of email so I don't suppose it will help.

***[Apparently the update is false because the original story is false]