Hi Monk,
well as per what i have read and common parlance of law as i understand, CFAI permits usage by a charterholder of the designation as an adjective. thus they prohibit people who have cleared all their checks and balances to adhere to this rule governing the usage of their trademark. now it seems that the debate aint the trademark, but the semantics of it all. The question thus is whether you without being a charter holder can call himself CFA charterholder or not?
In india a similar situation of two different institutes arose. CFAI and ICFAI. They fought a legal battle for the usage of the designation within the territorial bounds of India. the resolution was amicable, the court case was continuing before arriving at a reasonable solution.The points to take from that were:
- Icfai will continue to operate under the Icfai brand; students currently enrolled in the program will be eligible to receive a CFA degree from Icfai,
- but Icfai otherwise is no longer offering the CFA program to new students.
- Icfai also will advise its existing alumni and students to use the terminology “CFA (Icfai)” to help distinguish themselves from CFA Institute’s charterholders.
my point being, yes people dispute the CFA designation being the whole sole of one institute, but in more cases than less, CFAI trumps the other institutions or continues to fight on for the right to own this designation.
Hence, our understanding as students of law, and to adhere to the strictest principle applicable, should allow us to respect these conditions being placed on the use of designation as an adjective by CFAI.
Now coming to using it as a noun, off course some one can name their child Chartered Financial Analyst if they wish to….even country, god names can be used as nouns, but do the people so named regarded as the same? In an institution trademark’s case, this dilemma is accentuated by a legal trademark i^ssue as well. so all in all its better to take the better path in my opinion. i think thats where people on this thread are coming from.
Finally, there may be legal loopholes(if you say you have found some), but that doesnt mean that people wouldnt plug them and until they plug those, someone would keep misusing the loophole. Again to reiterate these things are not as simple as they seem and you can get into trouble if you do not adhere to the basic norms of law as adhered world over.
all the best,