Taking on a trademark involves more than just filing a form with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and hoping to receive back a favorable response. Most companies buy a website domain to match their hoped-for trademark, and they mark up all of their products and services with the hoped-for trademark to start building the brand.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made the controversial statement back in 1882 that "God is dead." Pure Flix Entertainment took a totally different approach with its 2014 independent film, “God’s Not Dead.” Based on the success of the film: Nietzsche 0, God 1.
A Michael Brown of Okland, California, is in hot water. While we admire his entrepreneurship, we cannot understand what he does not understand about trademarks. Mr. Brown set up two businesses, “New York Jedi” and “Lightsaber Academy,” to provide training for use of the fictional weapons made part of the culture by the Star Wars movies.
Lucasfilm, the company founded by George Lucas, the creator and owner of the Star Wars franchise (and now a unit of Disney), is suing Mr. Brown for trademark infringement.
Many things can be copyrighted - from novels, poems and plays, to songs, music and performance. But fonts can – and very often are - copyrighted. By “font” we mean the design of a typeface.
And just to prove that, Font Brothers (yes, that is the name of the company) is suing Hasbro, the toy giant, for copyright infringement over its use of its Generation B font for Hasbro’s My Little Pony products. In the Complaint, the plaintiff claims that Hasbro failed to secure a license to use Generation B so it is using a “pirated font.”