It seems like you're mixing another comment of mine with what I wrote above. For what it's worth, I like Louis CK's approach - it looks like a great post-copyright business model.

But your original comment is orthogonal to working within the system. Saying that companies have to "protect their trademarks or lose them" is indeed true in the strict legal sense. But a company could legally "protect" their trademark by issuing yearly licenses for token compensation for products that they consider different enough, but the law might not.

By taking the strict legal definition out of its narrow context, you imply that a company has no choice but to act a certain way, when in fact there are specific people responsible for its behavior. We should not allow these people abdicate their reasoning by promoting the idea that the expected corporate action is the only possible course.