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What with the California recall election, the release of Gigli, and various other events of earth-shattering importance, the "news" has been providing us with a great deal of entertainment of late. But the particular "news" which I find most entertaining is that of the Fox "News" lawsuit against former Saturday Night Live cast member and erstwhile pundit Al Franken. I'm sure everyone has heard of this. Fox "News" is in a snit because the title of Franken's soon-to-be-released book includes the phrase "Fair and Balanced," which Fox claims is their trademarked property. They want the courts to block the release of the book. This has led to many amusing articles in the press. A typical article which I found amusing was written by Rick Kushman, and published in yesterday's Sacramento Bee.
( Archived Article )
I'm not up on the law regarding trademarks, which are not quite the same as copyrights. Though copyrights have been greatly extended in recent years, and can now run for as long as 120 years, trademarks can be held in perpetuity. I believe they have to be renewed from time to time. I know that they used to require periodic renewal. In the late 1960's, a California political activist whose name I've forgotten had an organization whose name he had failed to trademark. The name was then trademarked by another activist who had a very different agenda. The first activist couldn't afford to take the second activist to court, so he hit on a novel strategy. Having just learned the hard way about trademark law, he searched through the records until he found a large company still in operation which had failed to renew its own trademark. It was the Helena Rubenstein Cosmetics Company. He then registered the name Helena Rubenstein as his own trademark, and sent a cease and desist order to the company, telling them that they could no onger do business under that name. The company paid him a considerable sum to return the rights to the name to them. I don't think the activist ever bothered to get the original name of his own organization back. Time has dimmed the memory, but I believe that he took his bundle of cosmetics cash and vanished from politics.
I have no idea whether Fox "News" will win its case against Al Franken. Franken, after all, is not competing with Fox "News," but merely writing about them, and using the trademarked phrase satirically. Since the purpose of trademarks is to protect companies from fraudulent competitors who would trade on the reputable company's image for their own gain, and Franken isn't doing that, he may very well win the case. But however the case goes, the fact that the Federal Government is issuing trademarks on hoary cliches such as "fair and balanced" (which could probably be found in dozens of journalism text books published over the last half century or more) has given me an idea. Should Fox "News" win the case, a splendid opportunity will open up for us all.
I'm sure that any publisher, whether a corporation or an individual, could get a trademark on a phrase of their choice. I don't know if titles can be trademarked -- I know they cannot be copyrighted -- but it seems clear that slogans can be trademarked. Every person with a journal at this site, and every person with any sort of online journal or weblog or web site, is a publisher. If each of us were to trademark a slogan -- say, something like "Compassionate Conservative," or "New Democrat," or anything else which the powers -that-imagine-they-be have failed to trademark for themselves, we could tie up so many phrases that hardly a politician, or advertiser, or business enterprise could make a public statement without running the risk of a lawsuit from one or another of us. And for those of us lucky, or imaginative, enough to trademark a phrase which came to be in great demand might make a considerable fortune off of it. And wouldn't it be entertaining if, in the midst of a presidential campaign, one of the candidates used some half-witted cliche in his speech or on his posters (and when haven't they) and suddenly found himself slapped with a lawsuit from Bob Slobowitz, who turned out to have the phrase trademarked as the slogan of his LiveJournal?
I don't know how much it costs to get a trademark, or how long it takes the government to process an application for one, but I'm sure there are plenty of online journalers and web site owners who have the means and the patience to acquire them. The fact that there might eventually be some profit to be made is an extra incentive, but the greatest pleasure would be derived, I think, from the act of taking advantage of the relentless stupidity of our governing classes, and from flinging monkey wrenches into the works of both commerce and the political establishment. For my money, it's the next best thing to having Gary Coleman elected governor of California!
( Archived Article )
I'm not up on the law regarding trademarks, which are not quite the same as copyrights. Though copyrights have been greatly extended in recent years, and can now run for as long as 120 years, trademarks can be held in perpetuity. I believe they have to be renewed from time to time. I know that they used to require periodic renewal. In the late 1960's, a California political activist whose name I've forgotten had an organization whose name he had failed to trademark. The name was then trademarked by another activist who had a very different agenda. The first activist couldn't afford to take the second activist to court, so he hit on a novel strategy. Having just learned the hard way about trademark law, he searched through the records until he found a large company still in operation which had failed to renew its own trademark. It was the Helena Rubenstein Cosmetics Company. He then registered the name Helena Rubenstein as his own trademark, and sent a cease and desist order to the company, telling them that they could no onger do business under that name. The company paid him a considerable sum to return the rights to the name to them. I don't think the activist ever bothered to get the original name of his own organization back. Time has dimmed the memory, but I believe that he took his bundle of cosmetics cash and vanished from politics.
I have no idea whether Fox "News" will win its case against Al Franken. Franken, after all, is not competing with Fox "News," but merely writing about them, and using the trademarked phrase satirically. Since the purpose of trademarks is to protect companies from fraudulent competitors who would trade on the reputable company's image for their own gain, and Franken isn't doing that, he may very well win the case. But however the case goes, the fact that the Federal Government is issuing trademarks on hoary cliches such as "fair and balanced" (which could probably be found in dozens of journalism text books published over the last half century or more) has given me an idea. Should Fox "News" win the case, a splendid opportunity will open up for us all.
I'm sure that any publisher, whether a corporation or an individual, could get a trademark on a phrase of their choice. I don't know if titles can be trademarked -- I know they cannot be copyrighted -- but it seems clear that slogans can be trademarked. Every person with a journal at this site, and every person with any sort of online journal or weblog or web site, is a publisher. If each of us were to trademark a slogan -- say, something like "Compassionate Conservative," or "New Democrat," or anything else which the powers -that-imagine-they-be have failed to trademark for themselves, we could tie up so many phrases that hardly a politician, or advertiser, or business enterprise could make a public statement without running the risk of a lawsuit from one or another of us. And for those of us lucky, or imaginative, enough to trademark a phrase which came to be in great demand might make a considerable fortune off of it. And wouldn't it be entertaining if, in the midst of a presidential campaign, one of the candidates used some half-witted cliche in his speech or on his posters (and when haven't they) and suddenly found himself slapped with a lawsuit from Bob Slobowitz, who turned out to have the phrase trademarked as the slogan of his LiveJournal?
I don't know how much it costs to get a trademark, or how long it takes the government to process an application for one, but I'm sure there are plenty of online journalers and web site owners who have the means and the patience to acquire them. The fact that there might eventually be some profit to be made is an extra incentive, but the greatest pleasure would be derived, I think, from the act of taking advantage of the relentless stupidity of our governing classes, and from flinging monkey wrenches into the works of both commerce and the political establishment. For my money, it's the next best thing to having Gary Coleman elected governor of California!
