Trademark Trolls Stops University Nicknames

chipperdog writes: Trademark and patent trolls have even found their way in complicating a university nickname selection, with people admitting to registering nicknames with the trademark office just to stop them or get rich off of them. The Grand Forks Herald reports: "The search for a new University of North Dakota nickname hit a potential new stumbling block on Monday, when former Bismarck mayor Marlan 'Hawk' Haakenson registered trade names for several of the Fighting Sioux replacement options under consideration. Haakenson said he registered the trade names in an attempt to interfere with the nickname selection process, though a UND official said such an attempt was unlikely to succeed."

Comments

"found there way"

[Calydor]

Can't the editors even tell the difference between there, their and they're?

Re:Intent to interfere should be infringement

[jrumney]

So you're saying that abusing legal processes should be OK if it's just done for a laugh?

Re:This summary is incomprehensible

[Runaway1956]

Odd that the site seems to begin history in 1500. I guess that's as far back as they can dig. Odd also that they only cite climate change as a force that might push a tribe out of it's ancestral home. They just ignore the fact that other tribes were competing for resources. For instance, when the Mayan civilization collapsed, a lot of Mayans moved to the southeast US, displacing a lot of "native" tribes. As the Azteca rose to power, they also displaced a lot of other tribes. And, in more recent times, the Apache were pushed into the Azteca sphere of influence when they were pushed south by other competing tribes.

Yeah - climate change affects a lot, but pressure from other groups of humans have always played an important role in the Americas. The arrival of the Europeans simply put a different face on an ages old problem. That problem being, "What do we do when we meet competition to strong to compete against?"