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:"found there way"

[Godwin O'Hitler]

I'm still trying to parse "Trademark Trolls Stops University Nicknames".

Re:"found there way"

[binarylarry]

Their Their, know calm done.

This summary is incomprehensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it means more to people in the US, but to a rest-of-the worlder this summary is entirely incomprehensible. In fact it is the most meaningless summary I have read in around ten years of reading Slashdot headlines.

Re:This summary is incomprehensible

[NicBenjamin]

University of North Dakota's sports teams nickname was the "Fighting Sioux," a reference to the Sioux tribe that owned the state before the white man came. It's considered a bit dickish fort white conquerers to name their sports teams after their conquests, so the body governing college sports ordered them to come up with a new one or get permission from the Sioux. The bands on one reservation voted yes, the other reservation refused to hold a vote, so UND had to change it's nickname.

Which led to a convoluted bureaucratic process which die-hard fans do their best to derail in futile hope that the regulators (the NCAA) or the recalcitrant Sioux on that other reservation will give up and let them go back to being the Fighting Sioux.

This troll is apparently one of them, and he's trademarked the most likely new nicknames.

Re:This summary is incomprehensible

[Panoptes]

"This troll is apparently one of them, and he's trademarked the most likely new nicknames"

If he threatens legal action, tell him to Sioux and be damned.

Re:This summary is incomprehensible

[rtb61]

Which is fine, as long as he is a university sports association, of course if he is not, than the trademark just shows a dick with no understanding of law being a dick. So blocked not so much and courts will toss it out.

Re:This summary is incomprehensible

[Runaway1956]

Actually - you ought to ask the warriors of the tribes how they feel about being so honored. Yeah, you can ask the women too, but most definitely talk to the warriors.

All that you have stated here, is that you do not respect warriors. You are incapable of understanding the honor of being remembered as great fighters. If you live someplace where there are no Native Americans to speak to, then you should at least talk to some military veterans. We are everywhere, there's not a chance in hell that you can't find some veterans to talk to.

As for myself, I have Native American blood in my veins, I live close to reservations, and I've worked with members of several tribes for much of my adult life. With few exceptions, all of the American Indians I've ever known take some pride in those teams named after the tribes. I hear some objections, but the overwhelming majority are proud of their fighting history.

The single strongest objection to the use of tribal names, is that the pale faces don't really appreciate the history of the tribes, much less the culture. Mostly, they laugh at the white man for being ignorant.

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?"

Re:Intent to interfere should be infringement

[jrumney]

Except that we have an insider who uses the knowledge that the future use of a trademark is under consideration, and registers it purely with the intent of interfering. I think it would be a useful deterrent for the law to treat this as infringement despite the fact that the malicious registrant beat the legitimate user to the punch. Likewise for patents - patent holders who register vague patents for obvious future inventions without the intention or even technical knowhow to actually produce a working invention should get their own claims for damages thrown back at them.

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:Sounds to me

[Panoptes]

"The NCAA, a non-governmental organization which oversees college sports in the US considers this to be in bad taste"

In other words they have reservations.