Let’s get real ...“Welcome to”? A quick Google search produces 3,890 uses on the web, of the phrase, including high school student papers. Expand that to uses in all of Canada of just “Welcome to” and we get 13,600,000 hits and around the whole world, 457,000,000. Please remember Nick if you do not go after them all then it will be considered a selective malicious personal attack and harassment is illegal. I do not imagine though, that any court in the land will uphold the mistake of some automated registration search engine or federal bureaucrat that blindly registers common words as protected. The problem here is not the protection, it is the individual who actually thinks he can and should be able to own the phrase.
If this does get upheld though through some grave miscarriage of justice, or if any party actually settles with Nick, then look out world because I will be protecting “Good Morning” and “Come on in,” “How may I help you today?” and here is the big money maker “May I take your order”. So get prepare to cough up $0.25 to me each time you meet a friend on the street, or welcome (sorry, am I allowed to type that here?) a customer into your business or attempt to take an order from them...
PSSD, I’m sorry Nick thought you an easy target after all you have been through.
Consumers please speak with your wallets.
Timothy Ord
Parry Sound