trademark v

[Mark Mandel]

Look at the date: May 13, 2011. Disney backed away REAL fast once the Navy
cleared its throat. *Wall St. Journal*, May 26, 2011 (click headline for
full story):
Walt Disney Surrenders to Navy's SEAL Team 6 <http://on.wsj.com/mRGiv7>
Less than a month after a daring raid on Osama bin Laden's secret hideout,
the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 notched a victory over the Magic Kingdom.

Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it would pull an application with the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in which the entertainment giant sought
the exclusive right to use the term "SEAL Team 6" on items ranging from
toys and games to snow globes and Christmas stockings.

Disney withdrew the application "out of deference to the Navy," a spokesman
said.

The move comes after comics and other critics ridiculed the Burbank,
Calif., company for trying to profit off bin Laden's killing. Disney first
made the claim two days after the world learned of the secret
special-operations unit's daring mission into the al Qaeda leader's
Pakistan compound.

"Putting a trademark on SEAL Team 6 is like copyrighting 'The guys who
stormed the beach at Normandy,'" joked "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart
last week. "It belongs to all of us."

Navy officers privately expressed relief Wednesday that the company had
chosen voluntarily to retract its application, saving the organization from
a long trademark battle.

But the best part is at the end of the article:

Cmdr. Hernandez, the Navy spokesman, said its May 13 application wasn't a
direct response to the Disney filing, but rather an effort to establish
that the existing Navy trademark was broader than simply the word SEAL.

"The request for Navy SEALs and SEAL Team was to broaden our existing
portfolio," Cmdr. Hernandez said.

Yet Navy officials didn't file a request for "SEAL Team Six."

The Navy confirms the existence of SEAL Teams 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10.
The Navy has never acknowledged the existence of Team 9 while SEAL Team 6,
the service's most elite hunter-killer team, is officially called the
United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru.

Unofficially, DevGru is widely known as SEAL Team 6.

"We certainly would not request a trademark on a SEAL team that doesn't
exist, like SEAL Team 6," said a Navy official.

Mark Mandel

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> The OED has a very brief description of "trademark" as a verb, with no
> examples:
>
> > ˈtrade-ˌmark v. (/trans./) to affix or imprint a trade-mark upon.
>
> This seems a bit narrow, unless "affix" is treated quite generously. In
> fact, current usage suggests that "to trademark" means to either apply
> for trademark registration and protection or to make something famous
> and exclusive (the latter in a somewhat transformative sense). An easy
> search for the former includes "going to trademark" string, which
> produces 70800 raw ghits.
>
>
> http://goo.gl/qfLxA
> > Is Disney really going to trademark "SEAL Team 6"?
> > ...
> > In a perfect example of a big media company looking to capitalize on
> > current events, the Walt Disney Company has trademarked Seal Team 6,
> > which happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that
> > killed Osama bin Laden.
>
>
> http://goo.gl/0WR06
> > Disney Trademarks "Seal Team 6"
> > By Alex Weprin on May 13, 2011 4:25 PM
> >
> > In a textbook example of how big media company look to capitalize on
> > current events, The Walt Disney Company has trademarked "Seal Team 6,"
> > which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team
> > that killed Osama Bin Laden.
> >
> > The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the
> > operation that killed Bin Laden... and two days after "Seal Team 6"
> > was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on
> > the operation.
>
>
>

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