New York Businesses and Others Beware—Those Movie Terms you want as Brands May already be Trademarks
Recently, two Android OS bearing phones have quietly created an interesting example to all business owners of the power of trademarks. The two brand names in question are “Nexus 1” for the so called Google “superphone” and “Droid” for the Motorola manufactured Verizon distributed line of phones. The key similarity between both names is that they both appeared in beloved sci-fi movies: “droid” is from Star Wars and “Nexus 6” (note not “1”) was used in Blade Runner.
The other similarity these names share is the fact that they have both firmly entered the realm of trademark licensing. While Droid has been peacefully licensed from Lucasfilm for an unknown fee, the estate of Philip K. Dick (the original author of Blade Runner) have sued Google for trademark infringement, as no license was sought from them in that instance.
The Google trademark suit is still ongoing, but Google’s decision not to seek a license may rest on a core principal underlying trademark rights in the first place: “use”. In other words if a trademark owner does not actually use the trademark to brand something, they don’t really have a trademark (or trademark rights). Lucasfilm, on the other hand, has used “droid” on everything from animated TV shows to breakfast cereal. Whereas, the Nexus moniker has never been used to brand any product or service. Key difference and therefore a likely different outcome between the two trademarks.
In any event, the lesson for the business owner is to tread carefully when deciding to brand a product or service based on a name from a movie. The simple reason being is that it may already be used as a trademark and however farfetched it may seem for that to be the case, it might spell trouble for your business down the road.
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