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March 20, 2006
Stupid Trademark Ideas?
Posted by Alan Wexelblat
Trademarking common words and phrases is sometimes done and never popular. The reason that the phrases are popular is because they're commonly recognized descriptivves. Forcing people to use other terms leads to language oddities and confusion. For example, did you know that Marvel and DC comics jointly claim trademark in the term "super hero"? Me neither. However, a friend pointed me to Newsarama's story on "Super Hero Happy Hour" being forced to change its name
The Happy Hour comic series features heroes (can't call them super) on their off hours, visiting pubs and relaxing. Its publisher, GeekPunk, apparently received a recent cease-and-desist from the Big Two, though the comic was first published in 2003.
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1. Luis on March 20, 2006 6:10 PM writes...
Check the dates on the posts. They got the C&D in Jan. 2004. So not really new news. Still, significant and broken- another example that you can very easily use to explain our country's creeping IP extremism and broken registration processes for IP of various sorts.
Permalink to Comment2. Neo on March 20, 2006 9:27 PM writes...
This trademark can probably be challenged on the grounds that it is widely used as a generic term for the "product category" in question.
And would somebody PLEASE fix the "remember me" feature? It's been broken for days now.
Permalink to Comment3. Dan on March 21, 2006 2:31 PM writes...
The trademark itself goes back to the 1960s... and I remember finding out about it in a comic-collector fanzine around 1981 and getting all peeved about it, in a time before there were Internet sites, blogs, and forums to rant on. So it's pretty much old news.
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