Thanks to a reader at Kilpatrick Stockton for sending me this article from SeattlePi.com on the re-branding of AvenueA to AQuantive, Inc. It sounds like a somewhat typical experience for a company going through a name-change but I disagree with two statements in the article.  The first is the comment that dictionary words are either not protectable or prohibitively expensive to protect.  I don’t think that’s universally true.  Trademarks consisting of dictionary words such as RED STRING SOFTWARE or BLUE ANT ADVERTISING would make fine (and probably affordable) trademarks.  Second, I disagree that all the good animal names for cars are taken, as the chart of the Permian Era illustrates (this from Ditmars and Carter’s The Book of Prehistoric Animals, London 1935, via The University of Brighton’s School of Design site).