22 June 2010 ~ View Comments

Trademark idiocy.

About Claudia Book business In the Grove.... Open Grove

If you haven’t heard me rant about trademarks… Let’s just say I was in a situation where we did all our due diligence and still got screwed. It’s hard to complain because in the end, it all worked out.  I mean, if you count closing our business down for over three years working out, then it worked out. But I promised myself I wouldn’t rant about this again… today… here…

I wanted to share with you the inanity of trademark law. The National Pork Board has sent ThinkGeek a cease and desist letter (12 pages no less) for their April Fool’s Day product – Canned Unicorn Meat.

Notice anything? Yeah, probably not.

ThinkGeek infringed upon the National Pork Board’s trademark because the phrase “The New White Meat” is damned close to “The Other White Meat.” (Here’s a link to their post about it.)

ThinkGeek has been fairly chipper about it. Many laughs have been had around the Internet.

The problem is this – The National Pork Board is correct. ThinkGeek DID infringe upon their trademark.  Here’s the key issue: if the National Pork Board doesn’t defend its trademark from other people using said mark, they stand to lose the mark all together. In the agreement for a trademark, you must defend your trademark or you will lose it.

And I bet Geeknet, the owners of ThinkGeek, and their lawyers are busily working to appease the National Pork Board.

I bring this to your attention just to say again – the trademark system is archaic, stupid and highly in need of reform. With the fast pace of modern business, trademark issues merely slow down any progress to a crawl.  And, should you decide to trademark your work, you join the band of fools. Sooner or later, you, or your lawyers, will be sending a similar cease and desist letter to ThinkGeek, a college organization, a blogger or anyone else who ‘infringes’ on your trademark.

I ask you to think about it before you join into this merry band of fools.  Don’t just file a trademark because you think you might lose something. The truth is you’ll lose a hell of a lot more by jumping into this mess.

Trust me. I know.

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  • Marissa

    Wow!
    Didn't Oprah cause a stir because she swears she came up with “Aha! Moment” and got aggravated when it became the new buzz-phrase but swore up and down it was her original thought. I think she tried to patent it so if other companies used it she'd get payola

  • ClaudiaHallChristian

    Boy Riss, I can't imagine trying to trademark a phrase like that. It seems to ubiquitous in the culture. And that's actually the key issue. If you don't defend your trademark, someone can make a case that the phrase is a part of the culture, thus not trademarkable.

    This is true for the word and character “Jiminy Cricket”. I'm glad for that! :)

  • heart in san francisco

    I have invented phrases which I thought clever, and which soon appeared in other places. It seems impossible to protect some kinds of intellectual properties — once you put them in the public domain, they become fair game despite legal requirements that a certain amount of time elapse before that can happen.

    (I think the unicorn “new white meat” is funny.)

  • heart in san francisco

    I have invented phrases which I thought clever, and which soon appeared in other places. It seems impossible to protect some kinds of intellectual properties — once you put them in the public domain, they become fair game despite legal requirements that a certain amount of time elapse before that can happen.nn(I think the unicorn “new white meat” is funny.)

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