Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Mickey and the… WHAT?

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I just figured out what’s behind Disney’s latest efforts to secure a trademark.  

Stay tuned for their next new animated short: “Mickey and the Seal Team 6”!





 Purveyors of Terror… BEWARE! 

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2 comments:

Ryan Wynns said...

Actually, I would be ALL FOR some Gottfredson-style "plucky Mickey entangled in precarious situations overeas" stories, a la "Monarch of Medioka" or "Joins the Foreign Legion" (with a dash of Tintin...but that's not really a far cry!)...but set in the present-day Middle East!

They applied for this the day after? I'm gonna do my best to forget about this...some executives were probably calling each other in the middle of the night..."I know, I know, we've gotta get on this!" Gives you an idea of where the comics are on the higher-ups' priority lists...

Ryan

May 17, 2011 at 6:10 PM
Joe Torcivia said...

My obvious joking aside, Ryan, I honestly don’t know what to make of this.

I know this is America, and the object is to make money… but can some quick-acting marketing organization just trademark ANYTHING? And, because it is now within their rights, slap that name on ANY OLD THING IT CHOOSES? Will “Seal Team 6”, one day, refer to CAULK?

Suppose someone decides to trademark “The Issue at Hand”. I’ve been using that title since I started an APA column that reviewed comic books, back in 1994. Now, it proudly adorns my Blog. Might I somehow be prevented from using it?

Or, in the very (…VERY, very) unlikely event my comics scripting makes me a household name… can someone trademark my name? Could someone trademark the name “Carl Barks”, now that the man is gone? …And should I be exploring the options on “Paul Murry”? How about “Charles M. Jones”? “Walter Cronkite”? “Dwight D. Eisenhower”? I’m certain, for instance, that someone has trademarked (oh, say) “Orville Redenbacher”…I just hope that it was Orville Redenbacher who did it.

I think we’ve all had an eye-opener over this! (…Not “The Calgary Eye-Opener”! That’s probably trademarked!)

May 17, 2011 at 9:40 PM

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