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Australian Women Fight Over "Geekgirl" Trademark

Posted by samzenpus on from the geekgirls-geekgirls-you're-both-pretty dept.

bennyboy64 writes "Two prominent women in the Australian IT industry are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the trademark 'geekgirl.' A woman attempting to use 'geekgirl' on Twitter told ZDNet that women had been advised by the trademark owner to stop doing so since she owned the trademark for the word. 'She noted her trademark and asked me to stop calling myself a "geekgirl" in general conversation and to cease using the hashtag "#geekgirl" on Twitter,' IT consultant Kate Carruthers said."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. There's this thing called 'Google'. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://hashtags.org/geekgirl

  2. trademark law by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 2, Informative

    According to trademark law (at least in the US), if you don't defend your trademark you risk losing it. This unfortunately means people with trademarks wind up setting lawyers on everyone who produces anything vaguely familiar to that trademark, even if they don't particularly want to. Don't know whether it's true in this case, but it would be improper to jump to conclusions.

  3. Re:Who will win? by russotto · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wonder if either of them will actually have established valid use rights under this dispute. Geekgirl would almost surely be descriptive and as such would need to prove secondary meaning under the American system.

    The original registration was "publication of electronic books, magazines and/or multimedia both online on a communications network and on recorded media including optical disks and magnetic media". In that category it might be suggestive rather than merely descriptive.

  4. Re:Who will win? by gravis777 · · Score: 5, Informative

    BTW, in reading the article, the one who is sueing has had the trademark since 1995, the second one registared, but was not approved, in January of this year. Sounds like a legit complaint to me.