Friday, November 4, 2011

Missing The Point By A Moron

So I've been doing a series about what I think are really ridiculous copyright/trademark infringement cases.  If I ever get around to tagging them you should be able to find them easily enough but for now you can find them here, here, here, and here.  I thought it might be a good time to define some terms because, of course, some disputes aren't moronic as in the case of the Kroffts last week.

The current international copyright law is the Berne Convention which holds that the creator of a work owns the work as soon as it is created without it's being registered.  A copyright's financial benefits can be transferred to anyone other than the author at any time, as in the case of Peter Pan which is owned by the Great Ormond Street Hospital.  Trademark is similar and there's a better explanation about it here than I can possibly give you.  I am, after all, a moron.  It's trademark law that allowed McDonald's (again) to sue a shop owner to keep her from calling her place McMunchies.  IN SCOTLAND.  Anyway, trademarks are issued for things like company names and logos.  The thing that was particularly ridiculous to me about the Apple vs. Apple case was that Apple Corps. wanted to restrict another company's use of the common word "apple."  Trademarks, unlike copyrights, need to be registered for an infringement case to have any teeth.

Trademarks are also issued for slogans.  They're too short to be considered artistic works (although I wonder what would happen if a slogan was in haiku) so right of use is established on registration and the creator may not necessarily be the registered owner.  This brings me to this week's case, which judiang tipped me off about.  It seems that a a couple of bright bulbs have filed to trademark the slogan "Occupy Wall Street" because of it's "potential to be a global brand."  They're talking t-shirts, bags and other effluvia ephemera.  I'm normally on the side of entrepreneurs but, uh, isn't this kind of missing the point?  Or maybe it's putting a really sharp point on the point.  In any case, the organization  itself has now moved to trademark the slogan presumably so it doesn't become a line of umbrellas.

I just really don't know what to say after that because, wow.  How about a protest song?  This one was about the closing of a club on the Sunset Strip.  Have a great day!

11 comments:

  1. Reminds me of the trademark infringement case by Pilot Pens that caused Palm-Pilots to be thereafter called "Palms." I don't see how anyone could confuse this: http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/2429/palmpilot5000eu.png with this: http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6504/penq.jpg

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  2. This makes me think of one of my favorite songs, Chumbawumba's "On Ebay".

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFvCY0MkdXs

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  3. @bccmee...was it because they're sort of in the same category, Stuff You Buy At Staples? I agree it's stupid.

    @Kurbiss...that's an awesome, truthful song.

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  4. Getting back to the Generation X thing, it's one of the things I heavily resent about life in this century -- the commodification and resale of so many of my memories. If I'd have been aware of this as a child I've have been sure to have cultivated a different cultural frame :)

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  5. @Kurbiss...dare I ask what cultural frame you would have chosen if you could?

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  6. I agree it's weird to want to "brand" themselves. It does seem like they are 'buying into the system'. But at the same time, maybe it's just being politically savvy for this day and age. Because imagine someone else using their name to make money for themselves. You've got to fight the greedy bastards where they live - their pocketbooks! ;)
    Love "For What it's Worth"!

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  7. Hi Jazzy,
    Thanks for the intro to this issue. And I do see the irony in someone else trying to capitalize on "Occupy Wallstreet" since it now has legs, as they say. Ha!
    Cheers! Grati

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  8. @phylly3...it's sad to live in a society where people are willing to capitalize on someone else's intellectual property.

    @Gratiana...you're welcome, and yeah, it needled my sense of the ridiculous till I had to say something.

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  9. It's a more general pattern. For instance, in East Germany the walk / don't walk lights on stop lights had a distinctive image that was different from the West German one. When the Wall fell, gradually many of the East lights were replaced with the West pattern. However, eventually (inside a frame of about seven years), East Germans began to protest that they wanted their old image back. At that point a West German copyrighted the East German image. So the East German image appears all over formerly East German cities (esp on the east side of Berlin), but the profits for it go to someone in the former West Germany. That the image in question is explicitly a workers / proletarian related one designed for propaganda purposes makes it all even more troubling/ironic.

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  10. Leave it to a stupid bunch of smelly hippies to become what they despise with out knowing it - "Dude, we're so cool we should copyright OURSELVES" *toke* "Whoa that blows my mind...*toke*...we beat the man by becoming the man. Yeah, bro!"

    "Wall Street" should hide all of it's money under a giant bar of soap...

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  11. LOL, somehow I knew that would get your goat. And they're actually trying to stop someone who isn't affiliated with them from trademarking the slogan.

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Thanks for commenting!