from the holy-shit dept
The Church of Latter Day Saints has made it onto our pages earlier than for making an attempt to abuse mental property legal guidelines, sometimes to maintain content material out of the public eye that it finds undesirable. I do like to notice in posts like this that the LDS Church has additionally sometimes been fairly lenient on the subject of responding to critiques or commentary as properly. You’ll have heard of a wildly well-liked Broadway musical, as an example.
However it seems that the Church is again to its overly aggressive IP methods. Heather Homosexual appeared on The Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis. Since being on the present, she has written a e-book and titled it “Unhealthy Mormon.” She additionally utilized for a trademark on the time period to cowl merchandise and different items, which has resulted within the LDS Church opposing her application, claiming it’s going to tarnish the church’s good title.
Her utility with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace is opposed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which holds emblems with the workplace for the phrases Mormon, E-book of Mormon, Mormon Channel, Mormon Messages, Mormon.org and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
“Due to the misleading nature of the mark sought to be registered by (Homosexual), (the church) and the goodwill symbolized by its Mormon marks shall be broken in a cognizable method and registration of applicant’s alleged mark must be denied,” wrote the church’s lawyer, Michael A. Develop, who makes a speciality of mental property legislation on the Washington, D.C., legislation agency ArentFox Schiff.
I’ll word that the Church is just not trying to stop Homosexual from utilizing the time period because the title of her e-book. It’s, nevertheless, making an attempt to dam its use on any of the opposite merch items that Homosexual utilized for.
Now, it’s doing all of this by wielding its trademark on the time period “Mormon” and claiming that Homosexual’s trademark, have been it to be authorised, would denigrate and tarnish the Church’s mark. That’s merely absurd. There may be nothing about Homosexual’s time period that causes anybody to assume the LDS Church is “dangerous.” In reality, the time period actually does the alternative: it denotes that Homosexual is dangerous at being a Mormon.
The church submitting mentioned that as a result of “Unhealthy Mormon” is just about similar to the church’s Mormon marks, it could dilute their distinctive high quality, deprive the church of the flexibility to guard its status, persona and goodwill and make it harder to tell apart the church’s marks, items and providers.
“Applicant’s mark was adopted with an intent to trigger confusion, tarnishment and dilution and to falsely counsel a connection or affiliation with or approval or endorsement by opposer or the church,” the submitting said.
Just about none of that’s true, although it’s price noting that the LDS Church has managed to efficiently oppose related marks up to now. Right here’s hoping the Trademark Workplace sees previous the nonsense this time.
Filed Beneath: bad mormon, bad mormons, censorship, heather gay, mormons, tarnishment, trademark
Corporations: lds church
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