Copyright and Trademark Questions

Yeah, I figured - and no worries. It's probably still information that's good to have, and maybe someone else will find it useful.

 

I feel bad for this author, who crazily, because this world is small, happens to be friends with an old high school pal of mine. So...I used to think quite highly of her and now am like...whoa. BUT...in fairness, she was trying to protect her brand. This situation is an important one to witness for many reasons and honestly, she just went about it the wrong way. Should we all be so smart to study what trademark truly is and I think there was a failure to do just that in this case. Someone at the trademark office didn't do their job effectively. The fact that the single word could be trademarked is ridiculous. However, it seems the RWA has stepped in and at least stopped this from going any further (taking down more books with the word on the title) until things get more resolved.

 

Yeah the series name trademarked makes much, much more sense. The piggyback reasons she gave are, well, questionable imo. I won't go into it any further than that, given there were books published prior to the trademark being granted with the word (or a version of it) on the title/cover. The word is a trope in romance, and what this could effectively do is jeopardize creativity and rob authors of their livelihood (in a bigger version of this). It just seems like more common sense could've been placed behind it all...you know??

 

I only know a little about these laws from a B-Law course in college, but I'm very confused about the way she's attempting to apply this trademark.

First, it seems like the word "cocky" is too widely in use to be a trademark in the romance genre. But aren't there also rules about the form in which the word has to be used to be trademarked? Steerpike mentioned Warhammer, so I'll use that example. But while Games Workshop owns the trademark for Warhammer, I'm pretty sure you could still title a book series, say, Light of the Warhammer, couldn't you? I guess my question is, common word or not, is it really possible for her use of the cocky trademark to be so broad?

 

Branding should make it unquestionable who you are. That's the whole point of it. I didn't buy this one for a second.

 

True...and you're right in that the specific word in question being trademarked doesn't affect any of us on this site (highly doubt it but stranger things have happened).

I do, however, have strong concerns over the fact that generic words can be trademarked to go on titles. For example, if the words 'bride' or 'mail-order bride' were to be trademarked, I'd be fucked as would other authors who write in the same genre/subgenre. What about fantasy type words like sword, dragon, lord, etc? Do you see the possible ramifications here?

Perhaps it'll all blow over and we'll go back to the way things were. But just because this sort of thing doesn't affect you and your indie business personally doesn't mean it won't someday. I think the concern is justified and highly so.

 

I once had a music project named Blacklight. Sold a few CDs under that name. Then I got a letter from the lawyers for a record production company by the same name (I think they're still in business). They were nice enough to exchange a couple of emails with me ... at least once I was clear that I would change the name of my project.

So, yeah, a word can be trademarked. Remember the Monster kerfluffle? It's all a matter of who can throw their lawyer the furthest.

 

But the author's justifications in this case for having gotten the trademark in the first place are highly questionable. I mean, the word is a trope in romance that goes back for ages. How else to describe what those books are about? LOL There are books that predate her series years and years before she even came up with the idea. Sometimes we come up with the same ideas as other authors...but in this case she claims they were all copying her.

For example, one of my book titles has the same name as the series title another author has on her books who writes in my niche. I contacted her about it (plus I had read her books and they were wonderful) and instead of accusing each other of theft we decided to work together to promote our work. This is how it's done in a small community.

Lol I said I wouldn't comment on this issue again because it gets me heated but the tweets have pacified me for now.