Disney Owns This Trope / Real Life

• Perhaps the best aversion of this trope is any cleaning product by the Swiss company Rösch, which includes such awesome examples as "Linux" detergent, "Micro&Soft" softener, and "Mac Oxi" stain remover. None of them violate a single trademark law, because they're used for cleaning products, not for computer software. Whether they would run into problems in the United States is open to debate; one question that is considered very strongly in trademark infringement cases is "dilution", namely whether the product alleged to be infringing can reasonably be considered to be using it in a way which would lead to confusion between the two different companies or products. This is likely because cleaning products and computers are different enough to be non-infringing.
• Technology companies in particular are rife with "patent trolls" who own seemingly obvious/general patents and threaten legal action against smaller companies. When they think they have enough balls to do so, they go after bigger ones (and more often than not win). Notable cases where the trolls were defeated (or at least had little success if any):
  • In 2013, Soverain Software attempted to sue computer hardware store NewEgg because they owned an "electronic shopping cart" patent. They managed to get Amazon.com, so why not? Except NewEgg fought and brought to light how ridiculously obvious this patent was and won.
  • A law firm once represented a company that allegedly had a patent for scanning and saving it electronically. The FTC eventually slapped the trolls with a complaint.
• There have been jokes for years about Apple owning lowercase "i" and Microsoft owning the letter "e"; however, this is actually not the case given that, in the U.S. at least, you cannot trademark a single letter. This explains the proliferation of iProducts from both Apple and other companies, and why Apple has moved away from the i-prefix, preferring to use their company name as a prefix instead, such as with the Apple Watch and Apple TV.
• The Canadian government has the camouflage pattern used by the Canadian Forces, called CADPAT (CAnadian Disruptive PATtern), under copyright. The U.S. Marine Corps copied the idea and made a similar pattern (MARPAT) for their own use. Both governments have trademarked their patterns and do not allow "official" versions to be sold to the public. There are knockoff patterns commercially available.
  • One incredibly important distinction is that MARPAT has the Corps' real trademark, the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor in the pattern. Knockoffs do not, like the Army's UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern), which actually uses the exact same digital pseudo-random pattern, in different colors.
• Indeed, Apple seems to run into this trope a lot:
  • When the Macintosh came out in 1984, the ads and manuals had a credit to McIntosh (the people that make amplifiers and such) in them; Apple was later able to claim "Macintosh" as a trademark in itself.
  • Apple Corps/Apple Records and Apple had a bit of an argument over their name, but since music and computers were distinct markets, both continued to use the trademark Apple. But when Apple Computer started selling the iPod and music through the iTunes store, Apple Records took them to court for stepping on their trademark. The Beatles wouldn't appear on iTunes until the settlement nine years later, in which Apple Corps sold their trademarks to Apple, who re-licensed the marks back to Apple Corps.
  • When they introduced the Mighty Mouse, Apple Computer went to the trouble of licensing the name from CBS even though the device doesn't use the character's likeness at all. Whether or not it would have been legal otherwise is debatable (it'd be hard to confuse a computer mouse for a cartoon mouse), but Apple apparently wanted to play it safe. Unfortunately, a different company had a trademark on Mighty Mouse for computer mice. That company sued Apple and CBS in 2008.
    • For that matter, the first Mighty Mouse cartoon has an ordinary mouse locked in a supermarket, bathing in super soap and eating super cheese, to become Super... no, the hastily renamed Mighty Mouse!
  • In the late 90s, Apple owned the entire likeness of the iMac G3, including its round shape, translucent plastic, and blue-green color (along with trademarking the color's name, "Bondi Blue") and sued a few manufacturers that made all-in-one PCs of a similar look, the most notable being the eOne, a computer made and sold by eMachines.
  • In 2004, Apple applied for a patent for an interface that would search across multiple databases. This was when Google just searched the Web. Apple's interface would search the Internet and, let's say, your personal address book at the same time. The patent application didn't detail the program design, just what it would do. After being denied nine times, they got it, letting Apple claim that any kind of search engine that searches across different databases is theirs and theirs alone.
  • Many have snarkily mentioned that the entire basis for many of Apple's iPad-related lawsuits seems to be the fact that the flat black rectangle of glass (one of the most minimal designs possible) is patented to them.
  • Funnily enough, for a long time Apple ''didn't'' have the rights to use the name "iPhone" in Brazil. The Brazilian company Gradiente registered the name in 2000 when it planned to develop a cell phone with internet access ("internet phone"). Because Apple only wanted to register the name in 2007, the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) decided that Gradiente would have the rights to use it since they asked first. In 2013, Apple and Gradiente agreed to co-own the "iPhone" trademark.
  • Apple also doesn't have the rights to use the name "iPhone" in China, as it is a trademark for leather products there. Apple has been fighting a legal battle with the company that owns this trademark since 2012.
  • Apple owns the design for oblong-shaped electronic devices with rounded corners and slide to unlock (though this one was invalidated in Germany).
  • Back in the '80s, Apple sued Digital Research and Microsoft for implementing GUIs with overlapping windows, claiming that this was a distinguishing feature of the Macintosh. Microsoft actually licensed some elements from Apple for Windows 1.0, but the interpretation of said agreement was very broad (at least according to Microsoft) so they went ahead with overlapping windows in 2.0. The suit ended up being one of the landmark decisions in US copyright law regarding interface patents: Apple claimed that even if in comparison by separate elements Mac and Windows are clearly different, using those elements in a certain combination can recreate the Macintosh "look and feel". The court ruled that "look and feel" can't be patented. In a way, Google's defense of Android was partially built on that lawsuit, meaning Apple was toasted twice on the ordeal.
  • Apple's logo is an instantly recognizable image of a bitten apple. Despite the fact that said image can be argued in court that it's too generic to be trademarked, Apple is pressuring a Swiss fruit company to change its logo because it's too similar to Apple's logo. Said Swiss fruit company is older than Apple.
• Amazon has one of these "concept" patents as well. The idea of One-Click is their property, except in the EU where it was deemed too obvious to patent.
  • They also filed a patent for photos on a white background, as made rather infamous by a segment of The Colbert Report. In practice, the patent only applies to an extremely specific photography setup, making it essentially useless.
• Gulf+Western, one-time owner of Paramount Pictures, was once parodied on Saturday Night Live as the "Engulf+Devour" corporation, because "We own everything... and if we don't own it, we will." This was also done by Mel Brooks in Silent Movie... and rather subtly in TunnelVision (specifically, though the name "Engulf+Devour" is never spoken in this one, a movie being reviewed by Gene Scallion early on is said to be from 20th Century-Paramount, and as Paramount was owned by Gulf+Western at the time...)
• A company called SmileyWorld Ltd. owns the copyright and trademark on yellow smiley faces. This caused problems in the Watchmen fan community when Smileyworld refused to let Warner Bros. release memorabilia involving the series' famous bloodstained smiley logo. Smileyworld's copyright can been seen on at the end of the movie's trailers and on its posters.

  "Warning! Some people make the mistake of referring generically to icons as "smileys" or "smilies". This is an incorrect use of our "SMILEY®" trademark. Please make sure that you refer to "SMILEY®" only as a trademark for the icons (or other products and services) of SmileyWorld, Ltd.

• Walmart tried to trademark their smiley face, but failed due to it being too generic. They have since changed their logo to an asterisk-like starburst they call "The Spark". They later brought back the smiley face, but only use it in conjunction with The Spark.
• The Religious Technology Center is an organization established by the Church of Scientology in 1982 to establish and enforce the trademarks and copyrights pertaining to Scientology. Trademarks of the RTC include "Cause", "Celebrity", "Source", and "Super Power". Scientology's use of international trademark and copyright law has been a main source of criticism levied against the organization.
• The Egyptian Government copyrighted its antiquities, including the Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.
  • These are special copyrights, designed to be perpetual, and held by the Egyptian state. The idea is to allow Egypt to profit from its history and give it a claim on stolen artifacts. Many other countries with substantial archaeological treasures, such as China, have similar laws.
• UPS actually trademarked the specific shade of brown they use for their trucks and uniforms. Most color trademarks are based on exact Pantone shades or dye/paint formulas, which makes them quite easy to specify.
  • Mattel owns "Barbie Pink" and "Hot Wheels Blue".
  • The British Royal Mail has trademarked the shade of red they use in their logos.
    • Royal Mail also owns the trademark on the phrase "Special Delivery" in the United Kingdom.
  • In some countries, Cadbury owns the trademark for the color purple.
    • Cadbury have actually used this to force small chocolate businesses to change the color of their purple boxes and suchlike by suing them.
  • In Finland, a metal company Fiskars owns a shade of orange, commonly used for the handles on their scissors.
  • Owens-Corning owns the trademark on the color pink, but only as it applies to fiberglass insulation.
  • Likewise, the breast cancer research charity Susan G. Komen^note Founded as The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and later as Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The name comes from the founder's sister, who died of breast cancer in 1980.owns the trademark for pink in relation to advocacy for that disease.
  • The John Deere company once tried to trademark the distinctive green shade of its tractors, but their application was denied. Mainly because farmers would have lots of green things and they would like all of their equipment to "match" - seriously!
  • Tiffany Blue is trademarked.
  • Home Depot Orange is trademarked.
  • Target Red is trademarked.
  • T-Mobile has not only trademarked the color magenta with reference to mobile phones, it even sued Engadget's mobile phone blog for having a magenta-colored logo.
  • Kraft's Sanka brand owns the color "Sanka Orange" with respect to decaffeinated coffee.
  • Christian Louboutin owns the trademark to shoes with a red outsole when the rest of the shoe isn't red.
  • In the early 2000s, Nintendo owned the trademark color for "Nintendo Indigo", the color of the Nintendo Gamecube, and Gameboy Advance
  • Guitar pickup manufacturer DiMarzio trademarked double cream bobbins on humbucking pickups. This has caused headaches for Gibson because many of their vintage guitars used double cream pickups (which came about from a faulty batch of bobbins that didn't have the black pigment in them) before DiMarzio started manufacturing and selling them in that color. When reissuing those old instruments, such as when they recreated Jimmy Page's #2 Les Paul, they have to use black or zebra pickups instead.
  • Boise State University has a trademark on its blue football field, and other football teams wishing to have blue turf must obtain a license from them (though there's been some misunderstanding and it's been misreported as Boise having a trademark on the concept of non-green artificial football turf).
  • While most colleges use the Pantone Matching System to designate the proper shade of their school color, a few have actually managed to register their shade as a unique Pantone color, complete with number and shade name, like UCLA Blue (PMS 2383) and Aggie Maroon (PMS 7421) for Texas A&M.
  • It should be noted that colour trademarks are typically restricted only to competing organizations. They do not restrict average people from using those colours in their artwork. So go ahead and paint your car "Barbie pink" with "HotWheels blue" polka-dots. Sure, it may garner you plenty of strange looks and chuckles - but it would not get you into any legal trouble.
• The American Tort Reform Association has trademarked the phrase "judicial hellholes". They probably did it so no one else could trademark it and sue them for using the term.
• Monster Cable Products, Inc. has initiated trademark infringement lawsuits against Monster Garage, Monster Energy Drink, Pixar (producers of Monsters, Inc.), the Chicago Bears football team (the "Monsters of the Midway"), the Boston Red Sox (for the "Green Monster" nickname of the left-field wall at Fenway Park), and Monster.com, because MCP owns a commercial trademark on the word "monster". Many of these cases were flimsy at best—most involved products completely distinct from electronics cables, and the "Green Monster" and "Monsters of the Midway" nicknames predate MCP itself.
• As noted under "Comic Books", Marvel Comics and DC Comics jointly own the trademark to the words "Super Hero" and "Super Heroes".
• The mark "Swiss Army Knife" has been owned solely by Victorinox since 2005, when it bought Friendly Rival Wenger but kept it as a separate brand. The two remain the only outfits that sell Swiss Army Knives to the Swiss Army.
• Paris Hilton tried to trademark her catchphrase "That's hot". It was rejected.
• Donald Trump tried to trademark The Apprentice Elimination Catchphrase "You're fired!" So did a former contestant whom he fired. Both applications were turned down.
• Former basketball coach Pat Riley owns the trademark on the word "threepeat", having filed the paperwork when the Los Angeles Lakers had a chance to pull one off. The Lakers didn't get there. Ironically the Chicago Bulls won their first threepeat after beating the Riley-coached New York Knicks in the Conference Finals.
• After the Bulls' first three, a group of investors trademarked "Quad Squad" at great expense; for them, neither hilarity nor wealth ensued.
• The New England Patriots attempted to trademark "19-0" prior to Super Bowl XLII, something that the rest of the sporting world refuses to let them live down. In fairness, the preemptive copyrighting was probably necessary, as less than a year earlier, the Colorado Rockies coined the term "Rocktober" and then had to pay a lot to buy the mark from some entrepreneur who jumped on it immediately.
• Texas A&M University has trademarked the phrase "The 12th Man" referring to the home fans at football games. The Seattle Seahawks have a portion of their website dedicated to their "12th MAN", including the "12th MAN Ball", a game ball dedicated to the fans after a crucial win over the New York Giants. The Seahawks clearly state that they use the term under license from Texas A&M.
• The University of Texas at Austin, athletically known as "Texas", holds trademarks on their logo◊. This especially became a problem after a local business owner created a "Saw 'Em Off" image, which depicted the logo with the horns missing. Nearly ten years passed before UT really caught on (even though they had been wearing it to games). A new logo was introduced with just enough "fixes" to avoid lawsuits.
• The NFL, claiming to own a trademark of the New Orleans Saints catchphrase "Who Dat?", sent cease-and-desist orders to New Orleans-area shirt vendors selling unofficial "Who Dat?" shirts shortly after the Saints entered the Super Bowl. This led to Louisiana senator David Vitter penning a letter to the NFL saying "Who Dat Say You Can't Print Who Dat?" The league also tried, without success, to claim trademark rights to the Fleur-de-lis, which the Saints have on their helmets.
• The NFL has a trademark on the name "Super Bowl", forbidding advertisers and media outlets from using it without explicit permission and forcing them to resort to generic-sounding terms such as "The Big Game". (The league, apparently determined to prove its greed and lust for power knows no limits, has also attempted to trademark the phrase "The Big Game", though they backed down after a huge public backlash.^*the fact that the phrase already refers to another annual football game, which predates not only the Super Bowl but also the NFL itself, probably had something to do with said reaction.) There's also the NFL's infamous "You can watch the game, but you can't talk about it" statement. This led to a number of amusing commercials from companies mocking them for it:

  "Enjoy our fine salsa product while watching football in your bowl which is super."

  "It would be super...to have a bowl...of Planters nuts while watching the big game!"

  • The Colbert Report famously used Loophole Abuse by calling it the "Superb Owl".
  • A teaser for The Muppets' Toyota commercial in the 2014 Bowl had Scooter try to say "Super Bowl" but get interrupted by something or other, followed by more Loophole Abuse with Swedish Chef rendering it as "the Sfërndy Bøøm".
• The original logo of the Jacksonville Jaguars had to be changed because it was too similar to the logo for Jaguar Cars, Ltd.
• Tim Tebow has trademarked "Tebowing".
• Chicago area broadcaster Bob Sirott trademarked "OJ TV" during OJ Simpson's first major trial because he didn't want anyone to use it.
• Sportswriters referred to baseball's World Series as the "Fall Classic" for decades, but in later years Major League Baseball trademarked the phrase and started incorporating it into the official World Series logo each year,
• Soon after passenger Todd Beamer of Flight 93 uttered the words "Let's roll" on his cellphone^*Beamer helped rally the passengers to attack the hijackers, ultimately forcing the plane down in a field in Pennsylvania and probably averting the destruction of another major building, his wife tried to trademark the phrase, and actually attempted to sue Neil Young for his use of the phrase in a song about the 9/11 attacks. Her petition for trademark was denied. Newark entrepreneur Iman Abdallah had filed first, planning to put it on t-shirts and coffee cups to raise money for the families. Eventually the Todd M. Beamer Foundation was granted a limited trademark for use on audio recordings.
• Oleg Teterin, president of the Russian mobile ad company Superfone, has trademarked ":)" and ";)", and because of the similarity doctrine used in trademark law, all other smiley emoticons created by using punctuation marks. He says he won't go after private individuals who use emoticons in email and such, but will hunt down and sue companies who do. The actual chances of him holding onto the trademark are very, very slim.
• Leo Stoller, a self-styled "intellectual property entrepreneur", trademarked such words and phrases as Stealth, Sentra, Dark Star, Air Frame, Stradivarius, Havoc, Chestnut, Trillium, White Line Fever, Fire Power, Love Your Body, Terminator, and many, many more. Once he trademarked a word or phrase, he immediately launched million-dollar lawsuits against people and companies who were casually using those words. His lawsuits have consistently been laughed out of court.
• This has brought up much concern for the lawyers of Hasbro, in particular due to their Transformers line having tons of characters with descriptive and generic names. For instance, the character Jazz, who is an Autobot, has always been sold as "Autobot Jazz" in later years, because while there are plenty of other places the word "Jazz" could be trademarked, there's virtually no other place where the phrase "Autobot Jazz" could be shoehorned in. Other characters' names had to be changed because someone else had already trademarked them; this is why Hot Rod started being referred to as "Rodimus"—yes, someone managed to trademark "hot rod".
  • In an amusing bit of irony, Hasbro lost the ability to use "Bumblebee" during Beast Wars, because they didn't produce a Bumblebee during the series where everyone turned into animals. This is due to the issue inherent in the idea of making a toy of a bumblebee, naming it "Bumblebee", and then trademarking that: it would essentially be Hasbro saying that they are the only company allowed to make toys of a real-life animal and call them by their most common name. Trademarking the name under "yellow robot that turns into a car", on the other hand, is completely kosher.
  • Also, Hasbro has to describe Transformers as toys which convert, because if they transform then "transformer" is just a bland description, which cannot be trademarked.
  • Hasbro also threatened to sue humorist Randy Cassingham to stop his sales of "Get Out of Hell Free" cards, claiming they violated intellectual property of the game Monopoly. Details can be found here.
  • Hasbro also lost the trademark to most of the G1 My Little Pony characters' names due to lack of usage.
  • This proved to be a problem when canonising several fanon names for ponies, as many of them were too generic. Most of them just got another name tagged along with them, such as Lyra "Heartstrings" or Octavia "Melody", but some like Bon Bon (already trademarked by the Hershey Company) or Carrot Top (trademarked by the comedian Scott Thompson) had to be given new names.
• Though they have no trademark on it, Cirque du Soleil unsuccessfully sued Neil Goldberg's Cirque Productions for using the word cirque (French for "circus") in their name and the titles of its Cirque Dreams series of Follow the Leader shows.
• The publishing company holding the trademarks "Asterix" and "Obelix" went to court, forcing the open source project MobiliX to rename to TuxMobil.
• Harlan Ellison had trademarked his own name. This is somewhat common for some celebrities — athletes, musicians, NASCAR drivers, and porn stars, particularly. Trademarks only apply to certain uses of a name—just because Harlan Ellison is trademarked doesn't mean you can't name your child Harlan Ellison. It simply limits the use of the name in certain mediums (types of company titles, mostly).
  • Prince got into trouble with this, when the trademark for his name got assigned to his record label Warner (Bros.) Records, with whom he engaged in a high-profile feud throughout the 1990's. To circumvent this issue and give an extra "fuck you" to the big WB, Prince adopted a deliberately-unpronounceable "Love Symbol" as his stage name until the trademark on his real one eventually expired in 2000. Because Prince had this symbol copyrighted, it is ineligible for use in Unicode for as long as his estate maintains ownership; Warner Bros. had to send out floppy disks to the press that contained a special font with the Love Symbol included, and fans would adopt the emoticon "O(+>" as a way to write out the Love Symbol in text form.
• Tom Clancy sold the rights to use his name to Ubisoft.
• Sometimes, this is somewhat Necessarily Evil, due to things like these.
• In 2003, Spike Lee was granted a temporary restraining order which prevented "The New TNN" from renaming themselves "Spike TV". You know how it got over with the mainstream press, which joked that Lee might as well sue the following: Spike Jonze, Spike Jones, Spike from Tom and Jerry, Peanuts, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.
• Natalie (formerly Nadya) Suleman, famous for being the mother of octuplets, applied for the trademark "Octomom". She hates the nickname, and wants to own it so no one else can use it.
• KISS has not only trademarked their name, logo, and facial makeup designs, but bassist Gene Simmons has trademarked his name, his signature, and the image of a sack of money with a dollar sign on it. He also gets royalties from Geffen Records from the sales of the album Bandwagonesque by the Scottish alternative band Teenage Fanclub because that album uses the image as well.
• In 1978, Digital Equipment Corporation came out with the VAX line of mini-computers. In the UK, there was a line of vacuum cleaners named VAX. No problem so far, as the two trademarks didn't clash for reasons explained in the intro. But DEC's competitors had a great deal of fun borrowing the advertising slogans from the vacuum cleaner company, such as "Nothing sucks like a VAX".
• "Charles Darwin" is a trademark when applied to roses, according to a sign in the Bronx Botanical Garden.
• Kellogg's successfully sued Exxon/Esso for their use of a tiger mascot, claiming it infringed on Tony the Tiger. Though Exxon could still use the mascot, there are strict limits on how it uses it; all it can do is smile and wave. The issue was "tiger" brand food products sold in Exxon's convenience stores.
• Kohler, the manufacturer of plumbing products and fixtures has trademarked the names of the colors that their products are stained, and are very picky about their use.
• Fox News claimed the phrase "Fair and Balanced" and sued Al Franken for using the phrase in connection with his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. In response, Franken joked that he had trademarked the word "funny", and that Fox had infringed his intellectual property rights by characterizing him as "unfunny". The judge deemed Fox's lawsuit "wholly without merit" and Fox thereupon withdrew it before the judge could rule on whether it was even a valid trademark.
• The BBC owns the trademark for the classic "police box", because under UK law you only have the rights to a trade mark if you've used it as a brand identity for products and services. Not only had the Metropolitan Police stopped using real police boxes by 1969, but they had never used it as a brand identifier in the required way.
• While Adobe's trademarks are quite normal, the guidelines for using them, are very specific.
  • A large part of it is that most "Photoshopping" is actually done using any number of free (or at least cheaper) programs. The best way to piss off Adobe's lawyers is to say you photoshopped something in Paint.NET, Paint Shop Pro, Pixelmator, GIMP, Affinity, etc.—or even in Adobe's own Photoshop Express (or that product's predecessor, Photoshop Elements). Similarly, saying that you Googled something on Yahoo is "Bad. Very, very bad".
  • More likely it's an attempt to prevent their trademarks from being genericized. In fact, it's necessary for the trademark holder to show they're taking such steps, as if a trademark becomes generic enough without any effort to prevent it, that company may no longer be able to keep that trademark.
  • Car-Freshner Corporation ran a full-page ad in a Photoshop magazine about how the "Little Tree" is their logo, even if you recolor it or decorate it in any way.
• Many real names are registered trademarks, including Beatrix Potter® and Elvis Presley®. Dead celebrities whose names get licensed a lot.
  • Elvis Presley Enterprises not only has his name trademarked, but they also hold a trademark over his likeness. In other words, even if you don't have the clearances to use Elvis' music catalog in your work, you would still have to clear the use of Elvis or a look-alike as a distinct character.
  • The same situation applies with Marilyn Monroe. Williams Electronics' Taxi Pinball renamed their Marilyn lookalike to "Lola" and turned her into a brunette to avoid a lawsuit.
• In 2008, three jailed members of the domestic terrorist/secessionist group the Montana Freemen tried to charge the US government millions of dollars for using their names, which they claimed they had copyrighted. The government, in response, added 15 years each to their sentences for conspiring to impede the duties of federal prison officers and extortion.
• There is piano sheet music for "Rhapsody In Blue" by George Gershwin®. [1]
• Harley-Davidson attempted to trademark the sound of their motorcycles revving: "The mark consists of the exhaust sound of applicant's motorcycles, produced by V-twin, common crankpin motorcycle engines when the goods are in use." Nine other motorcycle manufacturers opposed the trademark because they use the same type of common crankpin^note "Common" here is not implying that it's a "common", as in "generic", design, but a type of design wherein both connecting rods overlap, sharing a "common" crankpin by using a fork-and-blade design V-twin engines and thus made the same sound. The courts, recognizing Harley-Davidson's application for a trademark as being what it was (an end-run attempt to put its competition out of business) denied the application.
  • However there was at one point a trademark on the sound of a Harley-Davidson engine. The application was not based on the design of the motorcycle engine, but the noise as stock sound effect. The holder of the trademark asks for very little in royalties compared to most trademark holders and it seems to only apply in Australia and New Zealand territories.
  • Not all engines (particularly with smaller layouts like the two cylinders in a motorcycle) have perfectly even timing between power strokes. With two cylinders using four-stroke cycles, there should be a power stroke every 360 degrees of crankshaft rotation (720 deg. per cycle divided by 2 cylinders equals 360 degrees). However, Harley's distinctive sound comes from the fact that one cylinder fires, then the second one fires only 270 degrees later, leaving 450 degrees until the first one fires again. So, they are attempting to trademark a mechanical design that they use and no one else does, particularly a design that provides a very distinctive sound.
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer naturally trademarked the image of their mascot, Leo the Lion, roaring. But they also trademarked the sound of his roar.
  • This makes sense, as neither the visual nor the sound of the Leo's roar^note the latter of which has been a sythenized creation since the early 1980s are actually accurate depictions of a lion's roar.
• NBC has trademarked its distinctive "dun DUN duhn..." three-tone chime (listen here).
• Intel trademarked its "dun dun DUN duhn..." four-tone chime (the one that accompanied the "Intel Inside" insignia, which was also trademarked.) (Listen here).
  • For that matter, Intel also trademarked the word "inside". Riverdale potato chips, sold only at Irving gas stations in Atlantic Canada, were abruptly discontinued sometime in the late 1990s/early 2000s because Intel took issue with the slogan on the bag, "Pride Inside".
• Don't forget Law & Order and their "Dun dun".
• Taco Bell owns the rights to the "dong!" sound used in their commercials. In addition, they caused a national stir with an April Fool's Day joke in 1996 claiming that they were purchasing the Liberty Bell and would re-name it the "Taco Liberty Bell".
• The Harlem Globetrotters have control over the 1949 recording of the song "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Brother Bones and His Shadows, which they have used as their theme song since about 1950 and trademarked in 1952.
• The "deep note" used to notify you that the THX did the sound for the movie you are watching has been trademarked.
• The "glissando followed by the words A T and T" has been registered as a sound mark.
• Toblerone trademarked the triangular wedge shape as it applies to chocolate bars.
• The Columbia Journalism Review and other journalism journals often run ads from major companies (particularly Coca-Cola, Xerox and Johnson and Johnson) imploring reporters and writers to shy away from the use of brand names as generic terms. In this, they do, surprisingly, have a point, as words such as "aspirin", "cellophane", "laundromat", and "escalator", which were originally trademarks, were ruled to have been abandoned because of their widespread acceptance as generic terms.
• CBS Corporation (Star Trek) has a registered trademark on the words "USS Enterprise". Never mind the first USS Enterprise was an armed sloop of the U.S. Continental Navy in 1775 and numerous U.S. Navy ships up to the present. Paramount, the previous owners, had tried suing the Navy to keep them from selling items with the words "USS Enterprise" on them.
• Despair, Inc., publishers of the Demotivator posters, trademarked the "frowny", :-(, and issued a mock press release promising to litigate all those who infringed upon it, even in private emails.
• A barely known fact: The word "tremolo", for many years, was a trademark of the Fender company (others used the term "vibrato arm" instead). Ironically, the word "tremolo" as used to describe the pitch-changing mechanism on a guitar is incorrect—"tremolo" refers to a variation in volume, not pitch—and so the other companies without the trademark ended up with the use of the correct word.
• Lucasfilm owns the rights to the word "Droid." Verizon Wireless had to get permission to use it as the name of the first Droid smartphone released in 2009 by Motorola. Verizon has since released several other Droid models, presumably under the same agreement.
• In a German fanfiction community called Fanfiktion.de, the use of the world "Lichtbändiger" ("Lightbender") was forbidden due to a company which produced sunglasses under that name threatening to sue the website. Cue the fury of many, many Avatar fanfic writers, who had to change their stories.
• Nestlé all but committed corporate suicide on Facebook when someone not only thought it was a good idea to delete the comments of anyone using an altered version of their logo for a profile pic, but act like a bratty teenage girl getting into an argument in the comments section of a YouTube video. Terrible business practice or a convincing practical joke? Either way, they're a laughing stock.
  • Nestlé also attempted to sue a Danish family company (which existed long before they took up their trademark). While it does produce chocolate under a Danish family name, you'd have to squint pretty hard to think it resembles "Nestlé" in any way.
• Infamous in the video game industry is the 1982 Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. lawsuit, where Universal claimed that Nintendo's Donkey Kong was a violation of their ownership of King Kong. After several months of Universal refusing to officially seek legal proceedings, instead simply trying to get Nintendo to agree to a settlement without litigation, a lawyer working for Nintendo discovered that not only did Universal not own the trademark rights to King Kong, but that they themselves had argued in the past that the character was in the public domain. The court case officially declared in 1984 that the character Donkey Kong could not be confused with King Kong, and that while Universal Studios owned the majority of rights (with the remainder being divided between creator Merian C. Cooper's Estate, RKO Pictures, and the Dino De Laurentiis company), they did not hold exclusive rights to the name and character as they had claimed. This court case win against one of the biggest movie studios in the world placed the then-"young"^note Though the company is Older Than Radio, at this point in time they had only been in the the video game industry for about decade, and in the United States marketplace for less than five years Nintendo in the "Don't Mess With Us" category. Nintendo went on to thank the lawyer that helped them win the case by hiring him as their main counsel in America and naming a certain character after him. That said, part of Universal's desire in all this was to have a top-notch video game company to make licensed games for their films. After failing to get Nintendo, Universal bought LJN Toys: a company most well-known through the numerous The Angry Video Game Nerd videos covering their horrid video game library. On a side note, Nintendo and Universal would work together almost thirty years later to create a series of theme parks.
• In 1975, NBC unveiled its new logo, a stylized letter "N" formed from two trapezoids, for which it had spent $750,000 to hire a graphics firm to design, print all-new stationery, etc. As it turned out, Nebraska Educational Television was already using an almost identical logo (which had cost them only $100 to create). In order to be able to keep the new logo, NBC settled with Nebraska Educational Television by providing them with equipment and cash worth over $850,000. NBC would eventually combine the N with their second 11-feathered peacock design. [2]
  • Saturday Night Live, an American staple on NBC, made fun of the redesign when it was happening by showcasing on the Weekend Update segment fictional rejected logo concepts, each of which was a more angular, extreme, avant-garde combination of flat red and blue shapes. NBC reintegrated the peacock to the logo a mere three years later, and while not exactly like the first colour-flaunting 1956 peacock, it's highly evocative thereof.
• German comedian Hubertus Albers has trademarked his alter ego's name Atze Schröder. In an inversion, he actually sends cease-and-desist letters to people who use his real name (but oddly enough, not the very trademark agency which shows it to everyone who asks).
• Just as silly is another German comedian, Mario Barth. He trademarked one of his slogans ("Nichts reimt sich auf Uschi" - "Nothing rhymes with [the name] Uschi", a play on the easily found rhyme "Muschi" [pussy]). So far so good, but unbeknownst to him the very same slogan had been used 20 years ago (albeit not trademarked) and printed on shirts by other comedians. He tried to sue people sporting those old shirts for copyright infringement.
• The distinctively contoured Coke bottle is trademarked to The Coca-Cola Company. They spent a lot of time designing a bottle that would be both instantly recognizable as a Coca-Cola container, nor mistakable as anything but a Coca-Cola bottle (and wouldn't fall over; the original designs were unstable). Notice that even the plastic two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola (and other Coke Company products) resemble the famous contour bottle, while every other brand's two-liter bottles look alike, particularly in having plain, straight edges.
• Toho's lawyers are about as vicious and terrifying as the Kaiju they created, having copyrighted and/or trademarked every aspect of Godzilla from his likeness to his roar. They will often sue groups for using the suffix -zilla, especially if it comes along with dinosaur imagery. This hasn't stopped various cartoons, video games, and anime from using his roar for giant monsters without asking Toho's permission and getting away with it.
  • This was the exact reason why the heavy metal band Gojira changed to the Japanese name of the movie when they got signed to a label, after being Godzilla on a few demo tapes.
  • Mozilla, most famed for the Mozilla Firefox web browser, treads carefully around them, but has so far escaped their wrath by being a non-profit foundation.
• A Spanish woman claimed ownership of the sun, and wanted to charge for all the people using it. As the article suggests, she seems to have forgotten the risk of being sued due to her property causing injuries and deaths via sunstroke and cancer...
• "D'oh!" is trademarked by 20th Century Fox, and therefore Disney. In a fit of Hypocritical Humor, The Simpsons once invoked this trope using the phrase, when a character portrayed as a lawyer for (ironically) Disney tells Homer that they own the exact note he always uses with the phrase.
• Games Workshop owns copyright for the term "Space Marines" and various other things relating to Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. They also claim ownership of a large amount of terms ranging from the specific (Tzeetch and Cadian, for example) to the more everyday (Epic and Inferno), and the Double Headed Eagle motif, despite the fact that was in use by various nations nearly a millennium ago. Perhaps the oddest thing about all this is that they were encouraging certain sites beforehand. They didn't start trying to beat people up with their lawyers until said lawyers had to deal with the infamous Saul Zaentz, who owned the film, stage, and merchandise rights to The Lord of the Rings (and who sued Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty for plagiarizing himself), and was essentially the largest reason it took Peter Jackson almost a decade to finally be allowed to adapt The Hobbit after doing The Lord of the Rings movies.
• Inverted by Eurovision Song Contest winner Dima Bilan (born Dmitry), who changed his legal name so he matched his artistic name to avoid claims of ownership of the second by his late producer's family.
• There is a possibly apocryphal story that Mick Jagger tried to use copyright law to prevent any other musicians from using stage names related to cutting implements (a "jagger" is a type of knife). This was prompted by David Jones' success under the name David Bowie (a "bowie" is another type of knife).
• The company owning the copyright for The Three Stooges managed to essentially trademark a pronunciation, Curly's "Soitenly!"
• Nintendo trademarked the phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong!" for use in ads for Donkey Kong Country Returns.
• The Hebrew University in Jerusalem once tried mobile phone company Pelephone for using the name Einstein (as a synonym for ‘genius’, as it owns the copyright to his name) on an ad for their mobile internet service saying, ‘Suddenly everyone’s an Einstein.’
  • This may also be why in the Nintendo 3DS remake of Star Fox 64, the line "Hey, Einstein, I'm on your side!" had "Einstein" changed to "genius", since Albert Einstein's name is trademarked. Though as Nintendo Power pointed out, there probably isn't a well-known genius with the name of Einstein in the Lylat Galaxy.
• Gene patents. Sure, you can claim that once separated from a body so that they can be looked at, they aren't really part of the human body or whatever...but it's STILL HUMAN (or whatever) GENETIC MATERIAL. This not only tends to impede research for disease treatment, but also can be more than a bit scary when you realize that parts of your genome are actually owned by various entities...
  • This changed in the USA, due to the Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. Supreme Court decision in March 2012, and Assn. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, in which the Supreme Court ruled that naturally-ocurring genes cannot be patented.
• Likewise, there are software patents, which often patent well known algorithms. In one case, the source code of Doom³ had to be changed because it was later discovered that someone had independently come up with their graphics algorithm and patented it.
• Victoria Beckham once tried to sue English football club Peterborough United, because they were selling scarves, mugs and other items marked 'The Posh'. The lawsuit was dropped after it was pointed out to her that the club (or its predecessors) has been using that nickname since 1921.
• Partway through the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011, a law-minded couple attempted to copyright the name "Occupy [city]" and related phrases. Their explanation for this was that they weren't doing it out of corporate greed, but rather so that "One Percenter" corporations couldn't do that themselves and hawk shirts and pre-made signs, thus undermining the point of the protests.
• Plenty of online stores have been menaced by a man claiming to own a copyright on the yellow "Caution!" sign.
• Arkham House Publishers claims to own the rights to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Whether they actually do or not is a controversy in and of itself.
• The nonprofit known as Susan G. Komen^note Originally the Susan G. Komen Foundation, later Susan G. Komen for the Cure trademarked "for the cure" and the color pink with respect to products related to breast cancer awareness — not pink in general. But they have been known to sue small businesses and other, smaller breast cancer charities that used the color pink or other general cancer charities that use the phrase "for the Cure", not knowing that Komen owns these trademarks.
• The Red Cross, by international treaty, owns the rights to the red cross symbol, hence the use of The Colored Cross in its place. Using the actual red cross symbol in a work of fiction to represent medical supplies or The Medic, or in any other use the creator(s) might consider, is illegal. Before 1973, ambulances in the United States and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere were typically marked with a safety orange cross, differing from the red cross only in its hue. Toys and paintings of ambulances commonly ignored even that nuance, instead using a red cross. After protests from the American Red Cross that the safety orange cross was insufficiently distinguishable from the protected Red Cross symbol, the U.S. Department of Transportation developed the Blue Star of Life as a replacement for the safety orange cross.
  • This one is slightly different, though. The Red Cross is not quite doing it to be jerks, but because the treaty that the symbol is protected under is the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the conduct of war, and the reason it is protected is that it denotes critical infrastructure and personnel who are protected because they are connected with the treatment of casualties — i.e. the presence of a Red Cross on a legitimately protected person, vehicle or site makes it a war crime to fire upon or otherwise attack that person, vehicle or site, and conversely, falsely wearing or displaying a red cross as camouflage is itself a war crime. The fear is that overuse and misuse of the symbol could dilute the intended meaning of the symbol to a point where troops may not see it as protected anymore in a time of war.
  • On August 9, 2007, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) filed suit against the American Red Cross alleging trademark infringement. J&J released a statement to the public on August 8, 2007 detailing its decision to file suit, claiming prior rights to the emblem. After the court rejected the substance of Johnson & Johnson's complaint, the parties ultimately settled their differences, and the American Red Cross remains free to use its emblem in the sale of life-saving, disaster preparedness, and other mission-related products.
• Legend of the Five Rings originally had a logo of five rings interlocking to form a circle. Then the Olympics Committee informed L5R's makers AEG that they had a trademark on ALL logos featuring five interlocking rings in any configuration - by an act of Congress, no less. This forced AEG to redesign the card backs with a new logo (five non-intersecting coins), with all the problems one would expect from changing the card backs on a Collectible Card Game. AEG attempted to mitigate the damage by giving out large numbers of opaque-backed card sleeves at conventions, and the first expansion to feature the new card backs included a full set of sleeves in every starter deck at a loss.
• The family of Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting victim Victoria Leigh Soto have trademarked her name and face so that websites which promote conspiracy theories that rebuke the legitimacy of the tragedy could not use them. Fellow Sandy Hook parent Lenny Pozner also did a similar tactic against those using the likeness of his slain son Noah for propagating conspiracy theories, establishing the non-profit HONR Network as a way to combat online misinformation and conspiracy-mongering especially those aimed at Sandy Hook victims and their families. Suffice it to say, their efforts served to make Alex Jones even more of a pariah despite Jones' best efforts at defiantly showing no remorse over his outlandish claims.
• The makers of Listerine mouthwash own the trademark to the shape of its bottle.
• British telecommunications company Sky UK Limited owns a trademark on the word "Sky". No Man's Sky developer fought a three-year long legal battle with this company over the usage of the word Sky in the game's title, and was luckily allowed to use it. Microsoft was not so lucky, and had to change the name of its cloud storage service from SkyDrive to OneDrive.
• Stephen Hawking had his near-monotone voice synthesizer trademarked out of concerns that there was a high likelihood (especially when compared to a normal human speaking voice) that someone could create an unauthorized 1:1 recreation of his voice and fabricate recordings of things he never said. When he saw The Theory of Everything, his approval led to a similar computerized speech being replaced by the real deal.
• In the late 19th century the Netherlands faced a big problem with butter. A lot of manufacturers were selling products of very low quality which couldn't pass for butter if you tried, therefore the Dutch government enacted the "butter law" specifying what exactly goes into butter. Skipping ahead to 1948 when Calvé tries to put peanut butter on the market, they're forced to rename the spread to peanut cheese (pindakaas) because it didn't contain any actual butter.
• In June 2019, The Ohio State University attempted to put a trademark on the word "The" in relation to its real name of "THE Ohio State University". They were turned down because of the word's frequency of use as a common article.
  • However, OSU ended up getting said trademark in 2022 (co-owned with clothing company Marc Jacobs, who also tried to get said trademark). That said, the OSU/Marc Jacobs trademark is limited to its use on clothing, with OSU specifically owning it for sports apparel.
  • Along similar lines, Ohio University (founded in 1804) and The Ohio State University (founded in 1870) have waged what amounts to a "trademark cold war" since the mid-1990s over how the word "Ohio" can be used in reference to higher education (and in particular college sports).
• In August 2019, LeBron James tried to put a trademark on the phrase "Taco Tuesday", but the trademark was owned by Taco John's in 49 states and a local restaurant in New Jersey. Taco Bell challenged the trademark in a legal battle and won in October 2023, allowing anyone to use it freely.
• Based on the success of Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) and most especially the Disney-produced remake, H. B. Halicki's widow Denice applied copyrights for the "Eleanor" Mustang featured in the films. This led to lawsuits and cease-and-desist orders against those who made unofficial Eleanor replicas, one notable instance being YouTuber Chris Steinbacher whose Eleanor replica was relenquished. Further reinforcing their hold on the car's trade dress was the legal notice on the official Gone In 60 Seconds site: "Gone in 60 seconds® and Eleanor® are registered trademarks and the Copyrighted “Eleanor” Star Car character and image are owned by Denice Shakarian Halicki and are Licensed under her Company. Please beware that counterfeiting is under 18 U.S. Code 2320 criminal code, includes fines, jail time, forfeiture and destruction of the counterfeit property."
  • Surprisingly enough, they did not go after Rockstar Games who made a loose analogue named "Ellie" in GTA Online, though that could be chalked up to the fact that it was a parodic Fauxrrari than an exact reproduction, and parodies are protected under Fair Use anyway.
  • In 2022 and 2023 however, the courts ruled against Halicki, arguing that their copyright assertion for Eleanor as a distinct film character was "an invention of overzealous advocacy", and that the car was "not entitled to standalone copyright protection as a matter of law".
• The NCAA has trademarked March Madness, The Big Dance, Elite Eight, and Final Four in reference to its annual Basketball tournament, even though it originated none of those names. Most of them had long been used for decades in various states for their high school basketball championships before they ever got applied to the college tournament: March Madness and Elite Eight in Illinois (Kentucky has some claim to the latter) and Final Four in Indiana. The Illinois High School Association trademarked March Madness and Elite Eight first, and a court case mandated that the NCAA has to share the trademark with them. The NCAA later bought those trademarks from the IHSA, which kept the right to use them for its own events. Another NCAA tournament-related term, Sweet Sixteen, has never been owned by the NCAA. The Kentucky High School Athletic Association trademarked that term for its own state tournaments and still owns the phrase, but licenses it to the NCAA for a relatively modest amount. The origins of "The Big Dance" are less clear, but it was popularized by ESPN's Dick Vitale in The '80s.
• Norfolk and Western 611, the iconic Class J 4-8-4 steam locomotive, was trademarked by its owners, the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
• The Open Group copyrighted the term of "UNIX", which it uses to restrict it to systems respecting the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). It led to the use of U*ix for systems not conforming.
• The family of Martin Luther King copyrighted his speeches and sermons.
• The New York Stock Exchange has a copyright on the sound of its opening and closing bell clanging.
• Google owns the trademark for the verb "google" as in "to google something".
• The Fremantle Dockers of the Australian Football League debuted in 1995, with a name that evoked Fremantle's port city heritage.^*Though they actually play home games in nearby Perth But soon after, Levi Strauss & Company, with their Dockers line of casual wear, sent them a cease-and-desist, focused on the use of the Dockers name on clothing. Fremantle using an anchor in their logo, like Dockers apparel, was also an issue. As a result, the team just started branding themselves as the Fremantle Football Club, but fans, players and media still called them the Dockers anyway. Finally in 2010 they reached an agreement to pay a small annual royalty to Levi's to use the Dockers name.
• Pantone, who maintains the industry standard for color matching, maintains ownership over its 2161 hues to make sure that a creation's color is the same no matter where it was made. (Which mean that yes, they own colors.) Adobe did not renew its license to Pantone in 2021, so if you have a really old Photoshop image and you don't want to purchase Pantone's color hues which are now separate from Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription which lets you use Photoshop in the first place random parts of your image will be filled with black. The explanation given was that these colors have not been updated since 2010, so they were "significantly out of date and missing hundreds of new Pantone Colors", so "Pantone and Adobe have together decided to remove the outdated libraries and jointly focus on an improved in-app experience that better serves our users."
• The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is an interesting example: while considered by law enforcement as an organized crime ring due to their illicit activities (which they continually deny responsibility for, scoffing it off as a sort of "good cop, bad cop" situation by some of their supposedly rogue members), they also filed trademarks for the club's logo as well as other related insignia. This served at least two purposes—to keep outsiders from misappropriating their logo (outside of physically intimidating poseurs who wear their colours) and file lawsuits against companies profiting from their image (and thus claim financial damages in doing so), and as a shrewd legal tactic to keep federal agencies from seizing assets with the club's insignia on it both on trademark and free speech grounds. This strategy was also adopted by other motorcycle gangs, such as the Mongols MC who successfully resisted efforts by federal prosecutors to seize ownership of their trademarks.
• Gosling's, a rum distiller based in Bermuda, owns the US trademark for the name of the Dark 'n' Stormy cocktail. They're known to send a cease-and-desist to bars that put the drink on their menus and make it with a rum other than Gosling's.
• Similarly, Pusser's Rum owns a trademark on the name of the Painkiller, a drink similar to a piña colada. In 2011, they forced a New York tiki bar called Painkiller to change their name to PKNY, causing numerous bartenders to boycott the brand in response.

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