So this move may protect “this sick beat” in America but Swift will also have to seek a trademark in other legal jurisdictions such as Europe, making it a protracted process of patchworking. “You have to register a trademark in every territory for it to be effective in that territory,” he states. Plus there is no such thing as a global trademark. Ross notes that even if you have been granted a trademark, it does not follow that you are automatically able to stop every unauthorised use of it. It is not a straightforward process, however, as Twitter found out in its first attempt to trademark the word “tweet” in 2009 ( a second swing in 2011 was successful) while Donald Trump failed to get a trademark for “you’re fired” (his catchphrase from The Apprentice). Paris Hilton managed to trademark her “that’s hot” catchphrase and eventually settled with Hallmark in 2010 after a three-year dispute over it selling a greeting card bearing those two words alongside an image of her. Again in sport, “man of the match” was trademarked in 2002 and auctioned off in 2012 as a long-term goldmine. US wrestling commentator Michael Buffer, for example, managed to trademark the phrase “Let’s get ready to rumble” and it is estimated he has made over $400m from this deft move – some of which surely came from the coffers of Ant & Dec’s music career. There are some parallels and legal precedents – but they mainly come from areas like celebrity and sport. This is an area of music law that has been relatively untested in this way. “A trademark, if granted, applies to individual words – such as for logos and brand names.” “If you have a three-word phrase, to be absolutely certain you get copyright protection if someone else uses just those three words, you want to go for a trademark,” says Ross. While not totally impervious to direct attack, their main function is to scare off anyone even thinking about mounting an attack. Trademarks are like copyright in battle armour.
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