Yeah, I feel trademarks should be limited to things like "Farmer Bob's Old Tyme Remedy" or random strings of characters rather than simple, single words.

Do you think it should be legal to deliberately deceive consumers that a product you produce is actually produced by a well-known reputable company?

I think Bender is saying a company shouldn’t be able to be named Apple but have to be a made up word like Sorny or something g.

Exactly. Apple was already taken by the fruit. I see taking "ownership" of common words a form of forced irrational compliance and to some degree a form of extortion at least by my definition of extortion.

So again, do you think it should be legal to deliberately deceive consumers that a product you produce is actually produced by a well-known reputable company? Should I be allowed to sell my own smartphones using packaging that clearly indicates that the famous company Apple produced the phone? Or are you saying that, since the word "apple" existed before the company Apple, that anyone ought to be allowed to sell counterfeit Apple smartphones?

I am saying that Apple the current company and any other company squatting on common terms must be ordered to change their name and in this case they must provide a dozen fresh Apples to anyone that ever purchased an Apple product. A valid name might be "Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne's and Steve Wozniak's Computers of Los Altos" where the company was founded. Companies should not be deceiving people with cool or hip sounding company names. The names should be descriptive and entirely boring.

Would family names not be allowed either?

If I were diktat Tim Apple could have "Apple's Computers" and trademark that, but the short form of "Apple" no, even if people used that name in speech.

Luckily I'm not.