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Stories filed under: "trademark"

Ukraine Denied EU Trademark For ‘Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself’

from the politics-isn't-commerce dept

It’s not an easy thing to be able to find moments of levity in war, particularly one as lopsided as Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine. But one moment that fits the bill was when a Ukrainian soldier stationed on an island in the Black Sea responded to Russian demands of surrender with the now iconic phrase: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”

But what was a moment of defiant heroism quickly morphed into people making business decisions. First it was the Ukrainian soldier who sought to trademark the phrase, stating that he’d become aware of merchandise using his words and would seek licensing arrangements once granted the mark. That isn’t how trademark law works, of course. Then Kyiv stepped in, petitioning for a trademark on the phrase in the EU.

And the EU has correctly refused to issue the trademark, with its central premise being that the phrase wasn’t widely used by Ukraine in commerce, but as a political rallying cry.

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Wednesday that the slogan “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” cannot be claimed by Ukraine as an EU trademark.

According to the EU’s General Court, the phrase — which Kyiv attempted to trademark in Russian and English — “is not perceived as an indication of commercial origin,” accepting the argument of the EU’s intellectual property enforcers, who claimed late last year that the slogan did not meet the requirements to become a trademark.

The Luxembourg-based court considered that the phrase “had become very quickly a symbol of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression,” the ruling said. But it added that a sign “is incapable of fulfilling the essential function of a trade mark if the average consumer does not perceive, in its presence, the indication of the origin of the goods or services, but only a political message.”

Exactly correct. The primary purpose of trademark laws, generally, is to protect the average consumer from being fooled or confused as to the origin of a product. A widely disseminated political rallying cry for Ukraine has lost any function when it comes to being a source-identifier. Ukraine appears to be merely annoyed that others are making money using the phrase of one of its soldiers. That annoyance doesn’t warrant a continent-spanning trademark.

Ukraine has enough to worry about on its eastern border, frankly. As lopsided as this whole thing is, I truly want there to be some way for the country to be made whole once more. But I didn’t want the country to have this trademark.

Filed Under: eu, euipo, go fuck yourself, russia, trademark, ukraine, use in commerce

EFF Responds To Gas Companies Trying To Use Trademark To Silence Parody

from the eff-them dept

I won’t pretend like I’m not a huge fan of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has done great work representing clients on matters of free speech and technology innovation. Whether it’s defending anonymous speech from being unmasked or fighting back against the use of intellectual property laws merely to hide content from daylight, this is a group that certainly doesn’t back down from a fight.

But those fights continue. The most recent of them is a cease and desist letter sent from several gas companies to an advocacy group called Modest Proposals over the latter’s use of those companies’ trademarked logos on its site. The problem, though, is that Modest Proposals is a non-profit and the site it constructed is pure parody.

Modest Proposals is an activist collective that uses parody and culture jamming to advance environmental justice and other social causes. As part of a campaign shining a spotlight on the environmental damage and human toll caused by the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, Modest Proposals invented a company called Repaer. The fake company’s website offers energy companies the opportunity to purchase “life offsets” that balance the human deaths their activities cause by extending the lives of individuals deemed economically valuable. The website also advertises a “Plasma Pals” program that encourages parents to donate their child’s plasma to wealthy recipients. Scroll down on the homepage a bit, and you’ll see the logos for three (real) LNG companies—Repaer’s “Featured Partners.”

Believe it or not, the companies didn’t like this. (Shocking!) Two of them—TotalEnergies and Equinor—sent our client stern emails threatening legal action if their names and logos weren’t removed from the website. TotalEnergies also sent a demand to the website’s hosting service, Netlify, that got repaer.earth taken offline. That was our cue to get involved.

This is familiar ground for the EFF. It’s response to the two gas companies was in letter form, which was also posted to the EFF website. It is a point by point refutation of the claim that any of this is trademark infringement. I will post the entire letter below for your enjoyment, but here are some key points in the response letter.

Your trademark claim fails at the threshold because the Lanham Act regulates only commercial speech.2 Modest Proposals’ parody website is not selling any good or service; it is pure social commentary. It therefore falls beyond the Lanham Act’s reach.

Even if the Lanham Act did apply here, use of a trademark is not infringing unless it is likely to confuse consumers. The content of the website is facially and intentionally absurd: It purports to offer companies in the energy industry the opportunity to purchase “life offsets” that balance the human deaths their activities cause by extending the lives of individuals deemed economically valuable. The website also advertises a fake “Plasma Pals” program that encourages parents to donate their child’s plasma to wealthy recipients. We find it extremely unlikely that any significant number of consumers would mistake the fake website for anything other than the spoof that it is or believe that TotalEnergies, one of the targets of the parody, approved it. Indeed, courts readily recognize that successful parodies carry little risk of consumer confusion.3 Without a likelihood of consumer confusion, there is no infringement.

The letter goes on to note the First Amendment protections afforded to expressive works of parody.

Now, these companies have large legal war lychests to utilize should they actually want to fight this out in court, but they certainly shouldn’t. This isn’t one of those marginal cases where there is a real question of the law.

Instead, it is an instance the EFF right calls out as an attempt to utilize trademark law to silence expressive speech these companies simply don’t like.

Filed Under: free speech, parody, trademark
Companies: eff, equinor, modest proposals, netlify, totalenergies

Trademark Relinquished After Backlash From Trademark Bullying A Decade Ago By Pho Restaurant

from the pho-sure dept

It’s that time of the year in the Midwest, when the skies darken early and the temperature drops. And that means it’s pho season. As a lover of pho, allow me to educate anyone that hasn’t heard of it. It’s a soup of sorts, with rice noodles, spices, and meat. And it’s considered the national dish of Vietnam, where pho originated.

Lots of people love pho, including Stephen Wall and Juliette Wall of the UK, who traveled to Vietnam decades ago and then opened up a chain of pho restaurants back home. They also trademarked the name of their business somehow, which is merely named “Pho”. This would be roughly the equivalent of an American company trademarking “Hot Dogs”. What’s worse, back in 2013, the company bullied another restaurant, Mo Pho, into changing its name, citing that same trademark.

It’s a debate that roots back to 2013, when a small southeast London restaurant called Mo Pho said it had received a legal letter from Pho Holdings requesting it changes its name. Pho Holdings said it had trademarked the word ‘pho’ six years prior, a time when knowledge of the soup dish was limited in the UK, meaning only they could use the term in the title of a restaurant business.

Despite the chain claiming that it had not trademarked the Vietnamese dish, just the company name to protect business, outrage formed on social media, with one likening the decision to trademarking ‘sandwich and not letting others use it’. The brand later admitted to making a mistake and tweeted that they had dropped the dispute against the now-permanently closed Mo Pho, according to The Guardian.

Sure, Pho Holdings admitted a mistake in going after a competitor wielding an overly broad and generic trademark, particularly given the cultural appropriation aspect of it all. But it sure didn’t change its own brand name, nor relinquish its trademark. To date, Pho Holdings still operates its “Pho” chain of restaurants.

But then a Vietnamese influencer in London came across the chain and the story of that trademark bullying attempt from a decade ago and decided to use the internet to turn it into a full on freaking thing.

Fast forward to this month, and a London-based influencer with Vietnamese heritage reopened the discussion with a scathing TikTok, which gained over two million views.

Yen, who goes by @iamyenlikethemoney on the platform, said: ‘So, as a Vietnamese person, every single time I walk past this restaurant, it makes my blood boil because not only is this restaurant white owned…but they trademarked the word pho in the UK’.

She explained how the chain had contacted other businesses using the term in their name, saying: ‘Do you know how insane that is? That is like trademarking the word fish and chips, kebab, or sushi… it is so generic’.

Those two million views resulted in public calls to boycott the chain, along with online criticism of Pho Holdings for playing the trademark bully. For its part, Pho Holdings has pointed out that it hasn’t since gone after other restaurants purely for having “Pho” in their names, nor have any lawsuits been filed. That didn’t help all that much, as it turns out. Enough people understood that the root of the problem here was the existence of the generic trademark.

And due to all of that public pressure, Pho Holdings finally took material action.

A Pho spokesperson said: ‘We have always loved the Vietnamese food and culture that Pho has been inspired by and have been listening to the comments from the past week.

‘We understand the concerns that have been raised and have today filed a request to the Intellectual Property Office to surrender our registered trademark on the use of ‘pho’.’

So, the lesson here isn’t merely that public pressure on intellectual property matters can be effective. Instead, it’s that the public is capable of having a long memory on this sort of thing. Far too often we see trademark bullying attempted and then rescinded after a backlash, with too many companies presuming that backing down is all it will take to make the backlash go away.

In this case at least, the public has shown it can hold bullies to account, even a decade later.

Filed Under: pho, trademark, trademark bullying, uk, ukipo
Companies: pho holdings

Scottish Distillery Beats Silly Trademark Dispute Over Geographic Name ‘Port Of Leith’

from the port-in-the-storm dept

There must be something about the alcohol business that creates silly trademark disputes over geographic terms. We’ve seen this several times in the past, such as in the whole Ravinia Festival dispute, or the time two breweries fought over a trademark for the neighborhood one of them operated out of. While these don’t always turn out the way I think they should, the fact is that trademarks for geographic locations are supposed to be very, very narrowly granted.

But it gets even weirder when we’re talking about homonyms. In this case, it concerns a trademark dispute between the Douro & Port Wine Institute, an industry association for makers of those types of wine, and a Scottish distillery.

The European Intellectual Property Office has ruled that an Edinburgh distillery may partially continue to use the phrase ‘Port of Leith’ on its bottles after an attempt was made by an association of Port winemakers to ban it. The ruling states that the distillery is permitted to use the term ‘Port’ on its registered spirit products, but not on any future Port or Sherry products.

It was claimed by the Douro and Port Wine Institute that consumers would be “confused” by the distiller’s use of the word ‘Port’ and that the whisky makers would unfairly benefit from the positive historical association with the fortified wine.

You’ve probably already guessed where this is going. The “port” in Port of Leith has nothing to do with wine. Or alcohol for that matter. It’s a literal waterway port north of Edinburgh. The reason for the partial ruling is that the distillery actually does make some port wines along with sherry and whisky. Those wines may need to be discontinued or renamed, though I would argue against that. But the distillery is absolutely free to continue using its name and branding on packaging and in marketing for non-port wine products.

That the DPWI ever thought otherwise is absurd. Telling a business it can’t operate using the geographic name of its own home was never the purpose of trademark law. That’s why demonstrable public confusion, or the very clear potential for such confusion, is so paramount in trademark law. The point isn’t to allow a business to lock up common language, but to keep the public from being fooled or confused as to the origin or association of a particular service or good.

Thankfully, unlike what we saw in the Ravinia case, the EUIPO got this one right.

Filed Under: euipo, port, port of leith, trademark
Companies: douro & port wine institute

National Law Firm Learns That Competitors Buying Google Adwords Still Isn’t Trademark Infringement

from the trademark-rowe dept

Over a decade ago, we wrote about how the flurry of trademark lawsuits seen at that time over competitors buying up Google Adwords to get their company ads displayed when competitors are searched might finally be coming to an end. While these types of suits have certainly reduced in number based on anecdotal evidence, they have not disappeared entirely. And they make no more sense today than they did a decade ago.

Buying an Adword that would cause a prospective buyer to search for a direct competitor isn’t trademark infringement except in the rare cases where the ads are constructed such that actual substantial customer confusion occurs. Otherwise, it’s not different than ads and coupons in retail stores appearing next to a competing product. Because, you know, that’s where the potential customer is. If I go down the aisle looking for Oreos and next to them is a coupon for Chips Ahoy, that isn’t infringement. Buying Google Adwords for competitor’s search terms is no different.

You would think law firms of all groups would know this sort of thing. One national law firm, Lerner & Rowe, appears to need several court-taught lessons on the matter. They brought one of these suits against a competitor in Arizona, the Accident Law Group (ALG), lost, and then lost again on appeal recently.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld, opens new tab a lower court’s ruling that granted a bid by the Arizona firm, the Accident Law Group, for summary judgment in the trademark infringement lawsuit brought by Lerner & Rowe over ALG’s ads that appeared on Lerner & Rowe’s Google search results. Lerner & Rowe had accused ALG of attaching ads for its firm to search terms or “keywords” associated with Lerner & Rowe and siphoning off potential clients.

The appeals court said that despite Lerner & Rowe’s “strong” trademark and its expenditure of more than $100 million on marketing in Arizona, data from Google and ALG showed that only a tiny fraction of people who called ALG about potential legal representation mentioned Lerner & Rowe and therefore may have been confused.

As the court went on to note in its analysis, that’s likely because ALG didn’t actually engage in anything deceptive beyond buying the Adwords. The ads it displayed made it plain that the ad was for ALG and not Lerner & Rowe. The two firms’ branding is otherwise not confusing. There’s just nothing here, other than the Adword buy itself.

Which is why the number of people who even cited Lerner & Rowe to ALG is so tiny.

In 2023, U.S. District Judge David Campbell granted ALG’s bid for summary judgment, in part relying on data from ALG’s intake department, which said it received a little more than 200 phone calls from people who specifically mentioned “Lerner & Rowe.” In contrast, ALG’s ads appeared on “Lerner & Rowe” searches more than 109,000 times between 2017 and 2021, Campbell said.

The appeals court on Tuesday said that the district court was correct to conclude that the case was “one of the rare trademark infringement cases susceptible to summary judgment.

While this shouldn’t be surprising any longer, it is nice to note when the courts get these sorts of trademark questions correct.

Filed Under: adwords, keyword advertising, lawyers, likelihood of confusion, trademark
Companies: alg, lerner & rowe

Iceland Foods Is Still Battling To Trademark Its Canceled ‘Iceland’ Trademark In The EU

from the this-again? dept

When it comes to comedy, there is a principle that a physical gag will be funny if done 3 times, but then will stop being funny on any further attempts unless it reaches a much higher number, like 9. To see this in action, you need only look at this clip of the classic gag of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes in The Simpsons.

That scene is the very first thing I thought of when I came across the news that Iceland Foods, the UK grocer, is appealing again the cancellation of its previous trademark for the term “Iceland”. As a primer for those unfamiliar with this story, Iceland Foods wielded its trademark for years against other entities, but got itself into this mess when it opposed a trademark application for “Inspired by Iceland”. The applicant for that mark was Iceland, the country. Rake to the face.

Well, Iceland petitioned for the removal of Iceland Foods’ mark and it won. Another rake to Iceland Foods’ face. Rather than slink away, the grocer decided to step on another rake by appealing the ruling to the Grand Board of the EUIPO. That same Grand Board denied the appeal, another rake to the face.

You would think at this point that Iceland Foods would have had enough of the losing, the legal fees, and the embarrassment of continuing to fight over this stupid lost trademark against a sovereign nation, but nope. The Sideshow Bob of grocery stores decided that there was at least one more rake out there and appealed their loss on appeal to the General Court of The European Union.

Executive chairman Richard Walker OBE appeared at the General Court of The European Union in Luxembourg on 16 October to provide opening statements in the supermarket’s appeal. This marks the third round of legal proceedings in an eight-year battle over the use of the word ‘Iceland’ for marketing products in the EU.

In a LinkedIn post, Walker described the legal battle as “a really important battle” for his family business. He added: “We have traded under the Iceland name in the UK since 1970 and today we are one of the UK’s most recognised brands with 1000 shops, 5m customers a week and a growing international presence in more than 65 countries – including many in the EU and EEA.”

Dear lord, stop. Nothing in the above has anything to do with the trademark in question. The company can still trade under its business’ name. It can have more specific trademarks, such as one on the whole of its name, “Iceland Foods.” It can still do business internationally.

What it can’t do any longer is bully the shit out of anyone else who wants to use the name of an entire country in their names or marketing material. Including, you know, the country of Iceland, which Walker’s company tried to keep from using its own damned name.

Oh, and one other thing:

The retailer maintains that its name refers to the “land of ice” rather than the country.

Oh, shut up. That is both completely immaterial to this entire debacle and not remotely believable. My sole hope is that this is the last rake the company will step on.

Filed Under: eu, euipo, iceland, trademark
Companies: iceland foods

Brewery Settles Lawsuit Over ‘Big Juicy’ Brand And Rebrands To ‘Juicy Big’

from the big-deal dept

I have to admit, the volume of trademark dispute stories in the brewing industry I’ve done over the course of these many years here at Techdirt have surprisingly slowed down the last few years. I’m not sure if this is a function of the slowdown in industry growth in the craft brewing industry, market consolidation that likely occurred during COVID, or just a greater awareness of trademark risks as a result of the previous explosion of disputes, but it’s definitely down.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared entirely. Earlier this year, No-Li Brewhouse sued Redhook Brewery in Seattle for infringing its trademark with its “Big Juicy Ballard” brand (filing embedded below). Powering its lawsuit was No-Li’s trademarked term “Big Juicy,” which the USPTO actually made an incontestable mark in 2023. Now, as is typical for me, I lay the blame for this at the feet of the USPTO. After all, “juicy” is a ubiquitous term in the craft brewing industry, meaning that apparently the differentiator that made the mark fanciful and a source identifier was merely its pairing with “big,” an obviously generic term. There is zero chance a valid beer trademark could be registered for “juicy,” but somehow “big juicy” is valid and incontestable? Cool.

Well, because this kind of trademark bullying works, Redhook Brewery has settled the suit with No-Li.

The case was dismissed on Wednesday because the parties had settled on an agreement, court records show.

No-Li attorney Mark Hendricksen said he is not at liberty to disclose details of the confidential settlement.

While the full terms of the settlement are not public, of course, we do know that Redhook has agreed to a name change. Well, of sorts, anyway.

Redhook’s website, however, shows its beer in question appears to have gone from Redhook’s “Big Juicy Ballard” beer to “Juicy Big Ballard.”

The result of the suit allows No-Li to keep its trademark and also led to a rebrand along the lines of what Redhook wanted. They had an existing trademark for Big Ballard, so “I think this was a distinctive way for them to go back to their logo and use ‘Juicy’ in a descriptive way,” Hendricksen wrote in an email Friday.

The fact that’s satisfactory to No-Li only highlights just how silly and petty this all is. The change in name is insignificant to the point of absurdity. I can promise you that it will have absolutely zero effect on public confusion or lack thereof when it comes to differentiating these two brands. This is pure pint-of-blood stuff.

But again, to our friends at the USPTO… why? Why can we not simply apply just a little more scrutiny to these industry specific applications for trademarks that use generic combinations of words? Why must our legal system be clogged up worse than an alcoholic’s arteries purely because of your inability to do your jobs?

Filed Under: beer, big juicy, juicy big, trademark
Companies: no-li brewhouse, redhook brewery

Marvel, DC Lose ‘Superhero’ Trademarks After Failing To Respond To Cancellation Petition

from the super-duper dept

We have a hero in our midst, one that is responsible for freeing up the term “superhero” from its previous trademark imprisonment. If you don’t recall, Scott Richold is a British comic artist who produces the Superbabies line of comic books. Richold applied for a trademark for his comic only to find it opposed by both DC and Marvel. The two companies jointly held 4 trademarks to the term “superhero” and variations of that term. And if that strikes you as plainly absurd, given that the “superhero” is the name of an entire genre of fiction across many mediums, you’re certainly not alone.

As a result, Richold petitioned the USPTO to cancel those four trademarks, arguing that the terms have become generic. As detailed in a follow up post, I figured there were several ways that DC and Marvel might respond to the petition. They could have fought it, deploying a hefty legal war chest to try to simply bully Richold out of his attempt. Or they could have amicably released their marks, generating some amount of goodwill within the public. But I didn’t expect the companies to simply fail to respond to the petition entirely, which is exactly what happened.

As a result of the failure to respond, Richold moved for a default judgement, which would free the “superhero” term from trademark status and move it into the public domain. And, admittedly, to my surprise, the TTAB granted the default judgment.

A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal has canceled a set of “Super Hero” trademarks jointly owned by comic giants Marvel and DC at the request of a London-based comic book artist, according to a Thursday order.

The USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled for S.J. Richold’s Superbabies Ltd after Disney’s Marvel and Warner Bros’ DC did not file an answer to Superbabies’ request to invalidate the marks.

Interestingly, and somewhat frustratingly, the DC and Marvel sides of this equation aren’t responding to requests for comment. As a result, whether this failure to respond was part of a cost-saving plan in which the companies wouldn’t rack up legal fees for responses to what it knew would be a losing battle is unknown. Several commenters in previous posts suggested that might be what went on here, but we just don’t know. I would be surprised if that was indeed the case, but since most everything about this whole thing has surprised me so far, I suppose it’s possible.

But whatever the reason for the inaction on the part of DC and Marvel, the end result is that the term “superhero” and its variations are free once more for use across the different entertainment mediums.

Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg said in a statement that the ruling was “not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation.”

“By establishing SUPER HEROES’ place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers,” Adler said.

As it probably always should have been. Not all heroes wear capes, as the saying goes, so today we salute Scott Richold.

Filed Under: scott richold, superhero, superheroes, trademark, ttab, uspto
Companies: dc comics, disney, marvel, marvel comics, superbabies, warner bros. discovery

In-N-Out Bullies Local Sports Bar Into Poke-N-The-Eye Menu Item Name Changes

from the how-is-that-better? dept

We’ve talked a great deal about the trademark adventurism of famed burger chain In-N-Out. While In-N-Out has shown itself to be a happy trademark bully in several ways, most of our posts on the company have to do with the trademark tourism it engages in. This is the process by which the company puts up a popup restaurant once every couple of years in countries where it otherwise has no presence, purely so that it can retain registered trademarks in those countries to keep anyone else from using a similar name.

This isn’t one of those cases. Instead, this is more of the straight up trademark bullying scenario, in which In-N-Out wields questionable trademarks to bully other local businesses out of using the same or similar terms to what is trademarked. Fair Play is the name of a sports bar in San Diego and it had on its menu two items: “Animal Fries” and a “Double-Double.” Both are trademarked terms owned by In-N-Out, with the former being for fries topped by cheese, onions, and dressing, while the latter is for a burger that has 2 patties and two slices of cheese. “Animal Fries” is a term that is at least somewhat fanciful, though I would argue it is still very simplistic. “Double-Double,” on the other hand, is at least partially descriptive, as it refers to the number of two ingredients in the burger.

Regardless, Fair Play received a cease and desist notice from In-N-Out and reacted roughly as you would expect. First came the irritation over having received the notice in the first place:

‘Cease & Desist what you’re doing right now, you’ve gotta see this,’ Fairplay wrote in a social media post on National Cheeseburger Day along with a photo of the redacted letter. ‘We’ve officially been recognized by Big Burger!’

In the letter, the chain reminded Fairplay that it owned ‘multiple federal and state registrations’ for the use of the words ‘animal’ and ‘double-double’ in relation to ‘burgers and restaurant services.’

Note that In-N-Out somehow got the USPTO to grant it a trademark for restaurant services for the single term “animal”. That’s fairly odd, considering part of what In-N-Out is selling is cooked, well, animal. That sure seems entirely too generic to be deserving of a trademark.

But thanks to the USPTO granting that and the arguably descriptive “double-double” mark, In-N-Out is able to bully smaller entities in this way. And since trademark bullying tends to work due to the mismatch in legal war chests, Fair Play has agreed to change the names of these two menu items. Although perhaps not in the way that In-N-Out would have wanted.

In compliance with the letter, the restaurant did change the name of the menu items, but not before poking fun at In-N-Out’s non-trademarked phrases, including renaming their animal fries to ‘Secret Menu Fries,’ which retail for 12and12 and 12and28, depending on size.

They renamed the sandwich to ‘Burger Burger,’ which costs $16, according to its new menu.

“Burger Burger” is just inherently funny, but the real prize goes to “Secret Menu Fries.” In-N-Out is quite famous for having it’s absolutely not secret “secret menu” where you can order items that aren’t listed out for you. In fact, In-N-Out has some measure of fame for this practice. But it doesn’t have a trademark on the term, because that would be plainly too generic and/or descriptive to be deserving of a mark. And so now we have “Secret Menu Fries” at Fair Play as a result.

Look, it’s nice to see victims of trademark bullying having some fun with all of this, but in the end this is all still very annoying. Nobody is walking into Fair Play thinking that the double-double that was on the menu somehow meant there was some affiliation with In-N-Out. And the point of trademark law is to avoid that very sort of confusion.

Which means in this case that In-N-Out, once again, is just being a trademark bully.

Filed Under: animal fries, double double, trademark
Companies: fair play, in-n-out

It Happened Again: Child In UK Initially Denied Passport Over Copyright

from the stop-it! dept

It happened again and it has to stop. Back in 2014, we talked about how a UK woman had trouble getting her passport approved because her middle name was “Skywalker” and the UK’s passport office for some reason thought that Disney would have to give its permission to have the passport approved. There is nothing about a passport that would bring copyright into play, of course, and the passport office was simply wrong. But then it happened again a decade later, this time to a woman who named her daughter Khaleesi, after the Game of Thrones character. In this case too the passport office initially informed the woman that it couldn’t process a passport for her daughter without permission from Warner Bros. After this all made news internationally, the passport office reversed course and processed the passport application.

That was only a few weeks ago. And now it’s happened again, this time once again over someone who’s middle name is “Skywalker.”

Christian Mowbray, 48, is a serving soldier in The Corps of Royal Engineers at the Rock Barracks in Sutton Heath, near Woodbridge. He and his wife Becky, a former serving soldier, booked a holiday to the Dominican Republic at the end of October, the family’s first since 2014 due to their demanding work schedules and Becky’s struggles with Complex PTSD.

However, when they tried to secure a passport for their youngest child, Loki Skywalker Mowbray, the Home Office refused it on copyright grounds, telling the family to either change his name or get permission from the copyright owner, Disney.

Once again, this is nonsense. There is nothing about copyright law in the UK that somehow gives naming rights and restrictions for the children of private citizens to companies like Disney. And if someone really couldn’t get a passport because of a their given name, that’s exactly what would be occurring. And the idea that two soldiers, one retired, would have to put up with this nonsense from their own government is a shame.

Now, as you’d expect, the Home Office eventually corrected itself and began processing the passport. But once again, just as we said the last time this happened, that agency needs to educate its workforce to keep this from happening again. If for no other reason than it must be really embarrassing for them.

Filed Under: passport, skywalker, trademark, uk
Companies: disney