Annexing a year is a rare Swift misstep

There's a couple of reasons why Taylor Swift trying to own 1989 is disappointing.

First of all: you can't trademark a number. You can't trademark a year. To be fair, Swift wasn't quite trying to claim ownership of that, just 1989 scribbled down, but it's the same thing. Even at his worst, Billy Corgan never tried to command how people might use 1979, even in his favourite font.

Secondly, and what's more strange: Taylor Swift (or Corporate Taylor Swift Inc.) knew 1989 was going to be a big deal; didn't it occur to them that the best time to try and trademark something might be before signing the exclusive special edition deals with Target and launching the product?

In other odd Taylor Swift news, somehow I Knew You Were Trouble appeared on Spotify but credited to Lostprophets. Yeah. Lostprophets. In terms of 'making a prank as uncomfortable as possible' that's up there

Spotify's response was "someone gave us it like that" and a swift (ho-ho) pulling of the track.

Rihanna at war with the Boy Wonder

Rihanna has put in a trademark application to allow her to launch a cosmetics range under her real name.

Trouble is, her real name is Robyn, and that's upset DC Comics:

Rihanna’s legal firm, Roraj Trade, originally tried to trademark her name on June 23, 2014, for her new magazine. DC stopped the singer on May 11, 2015. They claimed that the name “Robin” already has his own trademarked products. The company trademarked the name “Robin” in 1995 so he could have his own comic book series and merchandise. Some would argue that Robyn is typically known as a female name.

Surely there's a more pressing problem here - a woman who isn't known professionally as Robyn and a character who isn't spelled Robyn are fighting over a name which...

...belongs to someone who is known professionally as Robyn, and who does spell it like that.

Taylor Swift protects her intellectual sickness

Taylor Swift has registered as trademarks a bunch of phrases which it's not entirely clear are original thoughts.

Vox reports:

Taylor Swift, dominant pop artist and professional businesswoman, has trademarked a slew of phrases related to her October album 1989. These include but are not limited to "Party Like It's 1989," "This Sick Beat," and "Nice to Meet You. Where You Been?"

She's also got "Miley Cyrus - is that still a thing?"; "I think you'll find that's my cheesecake"; "can you tell me where the nearest police station is, sir?" and "if there were nudes in my Instagram account, why would you need to leak them, because I would have already posted them to Instagram, poopyhead."

Alex James goes flat

Where were you on Monday, 19th December, 1994? The day Rolls Royce announced they would henceforward source their engines from BMW. The Whitewater investigations were started. More importantly, Thurman released the single Talk To Myself, thereby making this the last possible day that you could make a joke about calling a brand of fizzy drink "Britpop" and it still seeming - just, marginally - witty.

It's a joke that Alex James has just thought of, attempting to register Britpop as a trademark for pop made in Britain. Yes, in 2014.

The kindest interpretation is that James is attempting to use the patent office as a massive trolling device; sadly, the most likely explanation is that James thinks this is what a good idea sounds like.

Besides: it's Tizer, isn't it?

False FLAG case dropped

Hey, nothing says hardcore punk like running to the lawyers to sort out a spat over trademark ownership, right?

The battle between two zombie versions of Black Flag is over, with Black Flag's Greg Ginn losing an attempt to slap an injunction on Keith Morris' FLAG.

There was a side-spat, too, over whether Henry Rollins had any right to royalties on the Black Flag tshirts bought by children everywhere these days.

Some poor judge had to come to conclusions:

(1) the court found that SST had no rights in the trademarks;
(2) Ginn seemed to have no individual rights in the Black Flag trademarks;
(3) even if either had had any rights in those marks, they had abandoned those rights through a failure to police the mark for nearly 30 years;
(4) the defendants’ claim that the Black Flag assets were owned by a statutory partnership comprised of various former band members – even if these members only consisted of Henry and Ginn, based on (a) accepting Ginn’s argument that he never quit and given that there is no evidence or allegation that Henry ever quit – has merit;
(5) that even if the plaintiffs had some trademark claim in the marks, there was no likelihood of consumer confusion between Black Flag and Flag given the ample press coverage over the dispute; and
(6) the trademark application and registration that Henry and Keith made was done in good faith (e.g. not fraudulently) – and is thus not necessarily subject to cancellation – given that they understood their actions to have been done on the part of the Black Flag partnership (see No. 4, above).

Yeah, the most interesting part of that is the discovery that, legally, Henry Rollins is still a member of Black Flag. If this sets a precedent, it'll no longer be enough to quit a band by sneaking out a backdoor when the touring group stops over at a Village Inn, or by sleeping with the bassist's husband. It's going to be in writing, with 28 day's notice.

I think, legally, this means that The Beatles are still going and Yoko, as representative of Lennon's estate, is a member.

Furore-leafed Clovers

Harold Winley - who was a member of The Clovers when they did Love Potion Number 9 - is trying to win the right to perform under the band name from the trademark owners.

The Associated Press explain what happened:

Winley and another band mate, Harold Lucas, went on to perform with separate musical groups that called themselves The Clovers, and Harold Lucas' group eventually trademarked the name in the 1980s. Lucas died in 1994, but two of the men he trademarked the group's name with continue to use it when performing.

Yeah, you thought the Sugababes had weaved a tangled web.

Winley has been refused the right to be Harold Winley And The Original Clovers. He doesn't think it's right:

"It is our position that when people come to see The Clovers they expect that they are going to see Harold Winley or another original member of The Clovers," said Winley's lawyer, Brad Newberg.

To be honest, I suspect that most people who go to see The Clovers think they're going to see the band that did Saturday Night At The Movies; or, more likely, they're thinking 'this is the kind of stuff that Dad likes, isn't it? Why isn't he smiling? Shit, maybe we should have done the winery tour after all'.

But there's a twist here. The trademark-holding Clovers turn out not to be worried about Winley being a Clover; they're upset at his suggestion he's more of a Clover than they are:

Charles Stevens, one of the group members from Lucas' Clovers, called the lawsuit "frivolous." Stevens, who lives in Washington, said Winley is not an "original Clover" because he didn't start with the group until the late 1940s. Lucas and three others were performing as the Four Clovers before Winley joined.

They're having peace talks today. Good luck, everybody.

Young strengthens Pono with, er, trademarks

Give Neil Young credit, he's happy to push on with his fundamentally flawed Pono adventure.

He's registered some trademarks. Rolling Stone has had a look:

Evidence of Neil Young's latest move to brand and market Pono, his forthcoming music service featuring high-resolution master downloads of songs, can be found in his recent federal trademark applications for a pair of slogans – "Pono Promise" and "21st Century Digital" – which reside on Pono's website.

The latest trademark applications, filed this month, refer to "cases for audio tuners, audio receivers, amplifiers, tape players, compact disc players, MP3 controllers/players, audio mixers, audio speakers in the nature of music studio monitors, microphones, audio speakers, compact discs, audio tapes, portable computers, antennas, phonographic record players, audio recording equipment," according to documents on file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

That's the ticket, Neil - make sure nobody tries to hitch a free ride on your downward spiral.

X Factor: Bullying charity

As if the transparent faked storm on the front pages of the papers today weren't enough of an image-dent for the X Factor, there's a genuine storm brewing. A music charity claims that Cowell's people have been trying to bully control of its name from them:

On 23 September 2011, Simco (a company owned in large part by Simon Cowell) lodged an application in Europe to trademark the name "Rhythmix" for use by the programme X Factor. At the time of lodging that application, X Factor and Simco were fully aware that "Rhythmix" was an existing trademarked name of a music charity that works with vulnerable young people. Rather than seeking any discussion with the Charity, considering any of the moral implications of their actions, or checking with the Charity whether the pursuit of an exclusive trademark might have any negative impact on the activities of the Charity, Simco and their legal representatives sought a way to use the law to circumvent the trademark of the Charity.

The two questions for X Factor, ITV, Syco, Simco, Freemantle and Talkback Thames are simple:

1. You knew it was a music charity working with very vulnerable young people, so why did you try to take the name, aggressively seeking to limit the use of the name by the Charity by lodging applications to grant you the exclusive right to record, create promotional items and even use the word in printed media?

2. If you thought it wasn't going to be a problem, now you know it is. Professional people who work in this field are telling you it is. The media are telling you it is. The public are telling you it is. Why have you so far failed to make a public statement clearly laying out your reasons why you need to keep the name.... or why do you not simply change the name?

Perhaps even more unedifying than the idea of Cowell trying to snaffle a charity's name is some of the comments from what we can only presume to be X Factor fans on the charity's Facebook page. Take Ross Greig:

Maybe instead of wasting time into long notes you should put more effort into the charity. The whole point of charity is helping people. But how can you do that whilst arguing on facebook... Priorities

Clearly, reading what is an admittedly long but fair explanation of the charity's position was a bit of a strain for Ross, and made his head hurt. Otherwise why would he have written a comment so preposterous? Unless he really believes that trying to protect the name they've been using for over a decade is a waste of time. Perhaps they should just view this as if Ricky Gervais had "reclaimed" their name for them, right?

Rhythmix have rather a good response:

Actually Ross, I completely agree with you. I don't see any reason at all why we should have to monitor this wall, or write long notes, time that could be usefully spent doing what we want to do. Could somebody please tell Simco that as well?

Jake Ryan looks on the bright side:

If worst comes to worst and you lose and change your name, people will:-
A) Only remember the girl band as the band that stole the charity name (which will always have comedic value and they will be despised)

B) Still remember who you USED to be and remember the name you change to, everybody remembers the World Wrestling Federation, im sure you guys will be fine!

+If worst comes to worst, and you lose the name and all your publicity and everything, you'll know to get better solicitors!

Yeah, that's a good point. If you lose the name you've spent all that time building up, all you need to do is mount an expensive rebranding exercise. A few weeks of nationwide TV programming under your new name and you'll be fine, yeah?

It's unclear if Jake remembers that the wrestling people had to change their name after a charity had to fight a legal action to protect their brand in the face of a muscular attempt to snatch a trademark by a populist entertainment company.

Lady GaGa ice cream parlour palaver

This, I suspect, is the point where Lady GaGa had reached the what entertainment scientists call the Madonna Horizon, whereby the protection of the brand takes over from the things that made "the brand" interesting in the first place.

The GaGa management has sent a threatening letter to the bloke selling breast milk ice cream called Baby GaGa:

Matt O'Connor, owner of the newly opened Icecreamists parlour, said he felt like a man "wielding two spoons engaged in hand-to-hand combat". Lady Gaga's letter, he said, "described me as the 'controlling mind' behind the ice-cream, which makes me sound like Blofeld, in a James Bond movie, bent on global domination.

"A global superstar has taken umbrage at what she describes as a 'nausea-inducing' product. This from a woman with a penchant for wearing rotting cows' flesh. At least our customers are still alive when they contribute to our 'art'.

"She claims we have 'ridden the coattails' of her reputation. As someone who has … recycled on an industrial scale the entire back catalogue of pop culture to create her look, music and videos, she might want to reconsider this allegation.

"How can she possibly claim ownership of the word 'gaga' which since the dawn of time has been one of the first discernable phrases to come from a baby's mouth?"

More to the point, nobody is going to actually think that the product has anything to do with her. Even more to the point, they've been forced to stop selling it by Westminster council on the grounds that it's made from "what milk? eeeewwww ewww ewww."

The end of the Final Fantasy

Yes, yes, it's era-end days for your Wogan and your O'Grady and your More4News. (Don't you hope Catherine Tate will pop in to the More4News studios to run through a best-of bits as she did for O'Grady?)

But another era is also being wound up, as Owen Pallett is no longer going to be trading as Final Fantasy. At legal gunpoint:

riends,

I began playing solo violin shows in 2004. Although it was essentially a solo project, I named the band Final Fantasy, as the experience-- and the tone of the material-- was reminiscent of the hours and hours I had spent as an adolescent playing those epic JRPGs.

But the laws of trademark infringement exist for good reason, and so I am voluntarily retiring my band name. In the new year, my record Heartland is coming out, and it is my first to be released in many territories, including Japan. With this in mind, I feel it is in my own best interests to definitively distinguish my music from Square/Enix's games.

So, I am no longer playing shows as Final Fantasy. Subsequent releases, including Heartland, will be issued under my own name, Owen Pallett. Prior releases will sometime soon be re-packaged and re-issued.

I thank Square/Enix their kindness and support, and I thank you all for your understanding.

Salud!

Owen

Yes. We can see how people might get confused between a one-man band and a slightly sexy computer game. Well, I say "people", I mean "lawyers". And I say "get confused", but I mean "try to make some sort of case that people get confused".

Wells Fargo crush Essex swing band

"You would think they would have something better to do" observes Dave Bronze, bassist with the band that used to be called Wells Fargo until the bank of the same name got in touch.

Yes, apparently, Wells Fargo thought there might be people getting confused by a swing band playing in East Anglia and a US bank.

There's the usual old cant from Wells Fargo about "protecting the brand" - although it's perhaps a bit insulting to the customers of the bank to suggest that they're so dense that, if by some chance they found themselves outside a pub on the Colchester bypass on a Saturday night promising "Wells Fargo tonight", they'd be rushing inside to sort out their direct debits.

Wells Fargo are now simply Fargo. Let's hope the ID card company of the same name doesn't find out.

Katy Perry will kill all the homophones

Katie Perry has been working for a couple of years as a high-end designer in Australia, and was about to open her first store. She decided to protect her trademark.

Trouble is, she got hit by a cease-and-desist from Katy Perry and EMI, afraid that the singer's fans are so stupid they might confuse an Australian clothes shop with an American pop singer and start dry-humping the hat display stand or something.

EMI try to make this "you can't use your own name to sell your stuff" intervention sound reasonable:

EMI said in a statement Thursday that a "routine notice letter was sent to Ms. Howell, as is customary in trademark practice, alerting her of Ms. Perry's intended application" for trademark protection down under.

You'd have thought that, with all the money EMI spend on lawyers, someone would know the difference between 'alerting' someone to something and sending a cease-and-desist. Otherwise, sheepish EMI staff must have awkward moments - "well, yes, Mother, you did ask me to alert Father that the coal cellar door was open - and, believe me, I was on my way to meet with a couple of guys from the legal department to draft a document forbidding him from falling down the hole and breaking his leg when... well, when he fell down the hole and broke his leg."

Absolute lawsuit

Nobody, I think, will be surprised that Absolut Vodka's parent company is suing the radio station which used to be Virgin. The drinks company insists with a straight face that it really believes that its customers might get confused between an alcoholic beverage and a tepid radio network, which might sound unlikely. But if you drink enough vodka, it could well be possible.

If it had been us, I'd have spoken to V&S Vin&Sprit before getting the signwriters in.

Kraftwerk: "Our humourless faces are not a pose"

Kraftwerk's carefully nurtured reputation is looking slightly shabbier today: they're suing Kling Klang, seeing a band named after their studio named after an onomatopoeia as some sort of risk to their business. No, really:

“It is not like ‘Kling Klang’ is a brand name, like ‘Xerox’,” [says Kling Klang] manager Stefania Paolini. “It is an idiomatic German phrase, so we really don’t see the substance of their claim. We were aware of Kraftwerk’s notorious bent in sueing people and we were expecting the notice from one moment to another since we first stepped on German soil.

“And they way they have notified the claim was even funny… We received the letter in the form of a fax from some random promoter and the notice had all our addresses on it, kinda ‘we know where you live’ style.”

Kraftwerk have registered klingklang as a trademark, although - the sharper eyed amongst you will spot - that's not quite the same as the unregisterable kling klang.

Yoko is all over the internet

Yoko Ono is busily sending messages out to the internet to try and quash the claims that she's suing Lennon Murphy to stop her using the name. Her defence has popped up on Idolator and Boing Boing already:

Dear Friends

A musician named Lennon Murphy is claiming that Yoko Ono has sued her and that Yoko is seeking to stop Lennon Murphy from performing under her name, Lennon Murphy. Both of these claims are untrue.

Several years ago, Lennon Murphy sought Yoko's permission to do her performances under her name, Lennon Murphy. Yoko, of course, did not object to her request. Subsequently, without Yoko's knowledge, Lennon Murphy filed an application in the United States trademark Office requesting the exclusive right to utilize the name "Lennon" for musical performances. Yoko's attorneys asked Lennon Murphy's attorneys and manager to withdraw her registration of exclusivity to the name LENNON for the trademark. Yoko also offered to cover all costs Lennon Murphy had incurred in filing for the trademark. But Lennon Murphy went ahead to register.

Yoko did not sue Lennon Murphy, but sought to stop her from getting the exclusive right to the name Lennon for performance purposes. For that, Yoko's attorneys, simply notified the Trademark office that Yoko did not believe it was fair that Ms. Murphy be granted the exclusive right to the "Lennon" trademark in relation to musical and entertainment services. As you can see, this is a very important issue for Yoko and the Lennon family.

Yoko says: "I am really hurt if people thought that I told a young artist to not use her own name in her performances and had sought to sue her. I did no such thing. I hope this allegation will be cleared."

Thank you for your kind attention,

Yoko

As Karl T pointed out when he drew our attention to this, "Yoko" appears to have an interesting way of approaching talking about herself - not only talking about herself in the third person, like "George is getting upset", but also quoting herself. Oddly, though, when Yoko quotes herself, she suddenly starts to talk about herself in the first person again.

The odd thing, though, is the original source of the story - a letter from Lennon Murphy claiming she was being sued, posted on Julian Lennon's MySpace with the introduction:

Sad but True & interesting........... I feel for her & know the situation well

So, then, rather than Yoko's word against Murphy's, it seems almost as if you're having to choose if you believe the widow or the first born. Curious.

Ono sues Lennon

Wandering the streets of Liverpool - especially in the 1980s - you'd often hear mothers screeching "Lennon!" as they called their kids in for their tea. Oddly, McCartney never took off in the same way as a first name.

The Beatley-inspired naming, though, is now causing problems: Yoko Ono is trying to stop Lennon Murphy for singing under her own name.

Apparently it was stopping Yoko imagining all the world living in large houses peace or something.

Lennon Murphy had asked Yoko if it was alright for her to appear under the Lennon name - which was something of courtesy, as it's got nothing to do with Ono - but Yoko flipped when she found out that Murphy had registered her name as a trademark. Apparently Ono considers this a "tarnishment" - whereas, of course, a mean-spirited, money-grabbing legal campaign against a person using their own name throws nothing but glorious light on John Lennon PLC and its CEO.

Zappa'da ya face: Estate attacks tribute acts

It's something of a surprise to discover there's such a thriving Frank Zappa tribute scene that his widow feels the need to close it down.

Gail Zappa claims her worries are based around a cheapening of her Frank's memory by plodding pub acts doing his songs, and - more convincingly - that they're not coughing up the money for the estate. So, writs are flying - including one designed to close down Zappanale fan convention for breaching trademark law by using the word Zappa and, erm, an outline of a moustache.

We wish Gail luck with her campaign - after all, by refusing to allow grassroot fans the right to celebrate their hero, it's only going to be a matter of time before Zappa's name dies out. Perhaps she should also stop them playing his records on the radio.

The attempts to shutdown tribute acts, of course, does not extend to Dweezil Zappa's Zappa Plays Zappa tour. Hey, won't the mother's son be popular if there were no other tribute acts around?