I can’t deal with this at all seriously.
“Cocky” was the euphemism used in my family for shit when we were toddlers.
4 Likes
“Cocky”? This sounds more “dicky” to me.
@stefanjones, I’ve not read any of the books, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the word was used in the same manner here.
A few years ago when the 2005 movie “Stealth” came out, this guy who apparently had trademarked the word “stealth” in some way was in the news:
there is one sociopath who is thinking about how great it would be if they, too, could lay claim to a common word and make it their “intellectual property.”
I’m reminded of master trademark trolley Tim Langdell and his “Edge” trademark. He managed to turn a series of bogus trademarks (backed up by fraud - every time someone had an “edge” product, he’d falsely claim he had been working on something similar) into a goddamn career, even getting secondary revenue streams out of it by taking credit for the things other people did after they had to license the word “edge” from him. (E.g. he falsely claimed he was making a movie adaptation of a game under the name “Edge” and got makers of the movie “The Edge” to pay him a license fee; he then passed himself off as an expert on getting games adapted into movies, even being paid to talk about it at game conferences. Despite the fact that he had never done anything of the sort.) He worked this scam for decades, finally being brought low when a large publisher got annoyed enough to fight back.
Ignorant but basically well-intentioned (even if their intention is selfish) abusers of trademark do damage by creating chaos, but it’s too damn easy to actually work the system for profit and do damage as a side effect.
2 Likes
When my mother was a romance novelist one of her friends was Virginia Henley. I seem to recall that Henley started off one of her own books with the heroine exclaiming “Oh, what a COCK!”
I don’t care to guess on what her reaction to all this commotion is. I guess if I really wanted to know, I could look her up.
Thanks for the interesting analysis!
One tiny correction – trademarks aren’t published in the Federal Register; they’re published in the Official Gazette. Several authors groups I participate in are talking about ways to set up review teams for the OG, to make sure similar attempts at registration are challenged prior to issuance of registrations.
I believe she weighed in on Twitter with support for those fighting the trademark
That, that could be awesome.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
