I recall Chicago (the band) having a “®” character after their logo (couldn’t find anything online about it, so I’m not sure whether they registered the logo, the name, or both). Billy Joel is a trademark.
At the very least, it keeps people from selling stuff with their logos/band names. It’s their brand just like Coca Cola or whatever else. So it makes sense, from a business perspective.
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Right, though in Joel’s case it apparently had to do with an unscrupulous former manager.
The band Chicago could not copyright the word CHICAGO since it is a word in common usage. Their trademark held by the band Chicago is on the heavily-stylized depiction of the word CHICAGO. Their trademark protection would also only extend to articles in the domain of music and entertainment.
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Music and entertainment, excepting Broadway, where CHICAGO has done well a few times now, and hollywood where CHICAGO did fantastically well too. But yes. other than that it’s airtight
http://static.vix.com/es/sites/default/files/g/get-smart-zapatofono.gif
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Seems like thats the point
Sadly I came up with four or five representing most ethnicities in the US in the time it took me to read your comment.
Could this be applied to vanity license plates?
If you’ll pardon my french.
[spoiler]Monkey. Spook. Jew (yes its used as a slur). Paddy (short of Padraig, and thus also the short for Patrick). “Mic” (both a common nick name for, and derived from Mc-surnames). Tinker and knacker (both names for occupations now commonly used as slurs for Irish Travelers). Coon. Crow. Guido (also a first name name). Gypsy (both a slur and the accepted catch all for unrelated ethnic groups in the same cultural block. Twinkie. Oreo. Shine. Spade. Tar-Baby. Both Yank, and Yankee are technically slurs though its often of the lighter sort.
Terms like “porch monkey” and “bog trotter” are just made up of two innocuous words. Which can be used separately to imply the slur without saying it. Porch monkey in some areas doesn’t even seem to have a racial or negative connotation. I know folks who growing up that’s just what your granpa would teasingly call you. And applying it to black people was terrible. But only because porch monkeys were adorable scamps and granpa couldn’t possible refer to black people as anything other than the literal devil. Kaffir is both a nasty slur in South Africa. And an entirely innocuous name for a fruit. The two terms may have a similar root. But they aren’t directly related to one another. And critically the name for the fruit isn’t derived to a reference to the slur. [/spoiler]
And it goes on:
Even most of the slurs that are just slurs without other innocuous use, have pretty innocuous roots.
You can make all sorts of credible arguments. Doesn’t make them true or valid. It also would have very likely defeated the purpose of naming your Asian American band the Slants.
There’s a thing there that they’re very clearly trying to do. And publicly proclaiming “no dude we’re not about that at all” would be a little self defeating.
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Exactly. Like, as a white person, wondering WTF is wrong with watermelon? Oh black people like it. But does that mean it is bad? No? You still eat it? So…?
It doesn’t even have to make sense. It just has to be a thing.
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Oh, and they do!
My SO is Filipino, and is amused by racism against Asians (sometimes). So I sent her the wiki on the band.
Her: “Well, they say that slant has 3 meanings, only one is Racial.”
Me: “Yeah, but they do a lot of gigs at Anime conventions”
Her: “OK, yeah.”
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Are The Weebs also billed at the same convention?
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That’s a clear departure from the supposed textualist/originalist dogma of the USSC majority, however.
Damn. I was desperately hoping that the “ooh, I’m such an originalist!” stuff had been buried with Scalia… No such luck, it would seem.
That being the case, it’s kind of you to say that my position is a clear departure.
But neither of those productions used the stylized CHICAGO logo, so no infringement.
nor the eponymous typeface.
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