Posted by Adam Quinan on February 08, 2010 at 16:20:41 user Adam.
In Reply to: Trademarks posted by Duncan on February 07, 2010 at 19:14:41:
I am not an inteleectual property lawyer but the following is my understanding.
Trademarking the phrase "Swallows and Amazons" could prove to be tricky. The literary works are still in copyright so the content of the books is controllable, but the Literary Executors have not enforced S&A as a trademark, probably since they don't trade goods or services. Also as many other businesses do use the phrase, it would be hard for any one company to register it for exclusive use in a country or jurisdiction (EU for example) unless it paid off all the people currently using it in that country so they wouldn't object. Once it was trademarked, then the owner could go after everyone who used it (or even something close enough to potentially mislead customers, hence, to use a topical Canadian example, the International Olympic Committee's zealousness in protecting the trademark "Olympics" and the five rings. If everyone was allowed to use them then no one would sponsor the Games.