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Michal Ephratt, University of Haifa, Israel, "Word marks: Economic, legal and linguistic entities", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique IX/27 (1996), 257-286: Word marks uniquely merge issues of three autonomic academic disciplines: economics, law and semiotic-linguistics. Word marks do not constitute a homogeneous linguistic group. What brings them together is their unique economic-legal status. We examine the grounds stated in trade mark legislation and court judgments in terms of transparency measures. We show that the less transparent a sign is, the more likely are its prospects of obtaining the status of a word mark. There appears to be a trade-off between transparency and reputation, which holds both in registration and more so in passing-off law. Key words: trade mark; transparency; UK Trade Marks Act 1994; reputation. (e-mail: RHLH702@UVM.HAIFA.AC.IL)

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