George Lucas Wields Light Saber

sarchasm writes: "Apparently George Lucas is suing medical intsrument company Minrad for calling some of its new laser-based surgical devices Light Sabers. According to the suit: "Any deficiencies or faults in the quality of the defendant's goods are likely to reflect negatively upon, tarnish and seriously injure the reputation which Lucasfilm has established for goods and services marketed under its Light Saber mark. This confusion is likely to result in loss of revenues to Lucasfilm and damage to its reputation."" I know that I myself have on occasion confused surgical cutting implements and little-plastic-flashlights-with-plastic-cones. If you go into surgery, and the surgeon has one of these, he's made the same mistake, and you'd better let him know!

Comments

You have no clue.

[mosch]

Trademarks are categorized. There's absolutely no problem with two different products having a trademark on the same term, as long as they are for unique products, and the trademarks don't cause confusion as to the source of the goods.

Minrad's trademark on Light Saber (they have a live, valid trademark too) is for "G & S: Surgical instruments, namely syringes, trokars, biopsy needles, drills and cannulas adapted to be guided by an energy beam targeting and directing system".

On the other hand, Lucas Licensing's trademark on Light Saber is for "G & S: TOY SWORD".

This is merely a free publicity grab, and it worked.

--

Yet another person pusaded by the dark side

[hardaker]

You'd hope that Lucas wouldn't have fallen.

His Lawyers: That's right *show* your anger George: oh. Ok. Luke: nooooooooooo.....

A good thing [tm]

[miahrogers]

I, unlike most of you, happen to be a Master Certifiied Jedi Knight (MCJK). If I went into surgery, which is of course not likely do to my incredible pain tolerance and fighting abilities, one of these 'light sabres' wouldn't just cut me, it would make me dissappear.

Therefore I fully support all action that George takes against these people, but please George, don't get too full of yourself.

He has no choice.

[chill]

Trademarks, unlike copyrights, must be defended vigorously or they are lost.

If he doesn't defend against this, it can mean that his ENTIRE CLAIM on "light saber" is lost. Some other company can then make duplicates of the toys and call them the same thing.

The wording used "loss of revenue" and "tarnish the reputation" is standard Trademark-Suit boilerplate and comes from the legal requirements to sue over this sort of thing.

It is silly, but that is the way trademark law works.

--
Charles E. Hill

Re:He has no choice.

[BlueUnderwear]

> Trademarks, unlike copyrights, must be defended vigorously or they are lost.

But that doesn't mean he has to sue. He only needs to react. And a perfectly valid reaction would be to grant the light-saber wielding doctors a license to use the term. And no, this won't force him to grant a license to everybody else too; he still keeps the right to consider each infringment individually.

The only thing he cannot do is silently ignore the case. Btw, the purpose of this regulation about "having to react" is actually to protect the "infringer" rather than the trademark owner: it avoids situations like we hav with patents (.gif, etc.), where the owner may wait until the infringer has built a sufficiently large business around the trademark, and then force a costly change of name.

Re:He has no choice.

[locutus074]

Trademarks, unlike copyrights, must be defended vigorously or they are lost.

Yes, but also unlike copyrights, trademarks are only valid in one field. For example, take the case of the trademark on Linux (TM) laundry detergent. The different classes for which trademarks are defined are on the USPTO's web site.

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The court should throw this out

[signe]

Lucas has 1 trademark for the term "light saber", number 1126220. It's stated very carefully that it is a toy sword, and it is categorized under toys and recreation. He also has another trademark application, serial number 76072226, filed in June of 2000, for the "lightsaber" with the same categorization.

Minrad has one trademark application for the term "light saber", filed in April of 2000. It's categorized under medical equipment. Not anything remotely connected to toys.

This is why the trademark system has categories, and why two people can own the same trademark in different categories. Yeah, Lucas made the term popular. But unless some other toymaker uses the term, he shouldn't have a leg to stand on in a trademark dispute.

-Todd

---

F-150

[nick_davison]

Imagine if this continued with other non medical product names being used for medical products? How would Ford react if someone started calling a penis prosthetic "the F-150"?

Apologies to the [majority of?] Ford F-150 buyers who DID buy an F-150 as a penis prostheic.

We live in a tremendously litigious society...

[hillct]

Aparently LucasFilm isn't making enough money on 30 year old franchize, they have to go and sue a medical equipment maker for using the name 'Light Saber'.

Unbelievable. You'd think Lucasfilm would be honored that the words 'Light Saber' have infultrated so deeply into pop culture that a manufacturer of a completely serious preoduct would choose to refer to their product line using the mane of a ficticious weapon that appeared in several movies 30 years ago (and one more recently, but that interupts the flow of my rant on this subject).

Pathetic. I'm vary disappointed in LucasFilm for pursuing this issue at all. From a purely financial perspective, LucasFilm's Light Sabers are marketed to an entirely different demographic who would most likely be unaware of the existance of the medical instruments of the same name. LikewiseThe medical instrument manufacturer is is no way attempting to steal customers from LucasFilm by using the name, and if they were, I'd be truly frightened. I can see it now

Billy: I just got a Light Saber. It makes these neat noises and lights up, and only takes two AA batteries.

Joey: My daddy bought me a light saber too but mine has to be plugged into the wall bacause it's more powerful. It can cut through bone like butter. Wanna see?

Truly Frightning.

--CTH

The report is utterly bogus

[Zeinfeld]

Lucas is not suing Minrad, they are objecting to Minrad's application to stop anyone else calling the device a light sabre.

So all the weenies who are gibbering on about how evil Lucas is for defending his trademark have to ask why Minrad should have exclusive trademark rights to the name 'Light Sabre'.

The trademark categories are not definitive, an application in one category does not foreclose a dilution claim in another category. In this case I think Lucas's lawyers have very good case. Minrad want to trade on the name recognition that Lucas has created. If they want to do that presumably the greedy bastard lawyers at Lucas will be happy to license the light sabre trademark to the greedy bastards running Minrad.

Lucas is almost certainly not directing this as a personal vendetta. His trademark lawyers are simply doing their job.

Should Sue Himself

[Guppy06]

"Any deficiencies or faults in the quality of the defendant's goods are likely to reflect negatively upon, tarnish and seriously injure the reputation which Lucasfilm has established for goods and services marketed under its Light Saber mark. This confusion is likely to result in loss of revenues to Lucasfilm and damage to its reputation." That seems to describe Phantom Menace perfectly.

It sort of makes sense

[ColGraff]

After all, I think we can all agree that the reason this company is calling it's product the "Light Saber" is because Lucas already popularized the term. They're riding the marketing and name-recognition "coattails" of lucasarts' Light Saber in order to promote and increase name recognition for their own product. It may seem petty, but lucasarts does have the right to defend a trademark they have invested millions of dollars in.


USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.