o.supreme wrote:King Kuuga wrote:You cannot trademark the name Bumblebee for a toy of a bumblebee. It's too obvious. That's part of why there were never any Beast Wars characters named as such. But a yellow compact car or sports car that is also a robot named Bumblebee? You can trademark that
So...DC has no "yellow compact car or sports car that is also a robot named Bumblebee" so why is Hasbro suing...?
Because Hasbro has trademarked the name Bumblebee in the Toys and Sports category and they don't want anybody else using it (which is the point of a trademark). When people refer to a Bumblebee (proper noun) toy, they want the yellow robot to be the ONLY thing that comes to mind. This is almost certainly related to the Bumblebee movie coming next year and the surge of related toys that will follow.
The suit claims that the DC “Bumblebee” — a teenage girl with the ability to shrink — could easily be confused with the Autobot “Bumblebee.”
quoted straight from the article...in what world could those two types of toys be confused???
The world of trademark law in which parents are easily confused.
The company is now seeking to block the sales of Mattel’s Bumblebee toy, which is part of the DC Super Hero Girls line of action figures. Hasbro is also concerned about a Bumblebee Lego set.
OK...I may not be the worlds greatest father, but my daughter has a marginal interest in Super Hero Girls. I am no legal expert either, amazingly however, when my daughter speaks about "Bumblebee", and my son speaks about "Bumblebee"...without even using any pretext I KNOW which character they are talking about respectively. If they ask for toys or Brick based play sets of each, there is no confusion.
That's great, that means you pay attention to the interests of your kids and are aware enough of the toy market.
Practically speaking, you're right that almost nobody is liable to confuse Hasbro's character with DC's. But Hasbro owns the trademark to the name and that means nobody else is allowed to use that name for toys and sports merchandise. Hasbro is well within their rights to protect their trademark. The only gray area is that Mattel first released toys of the DC character in the SHG line a few months before Hasbro finally secured the trademark to the name (I guess they've been going without the trademark between 2006 and 2015? I'm a bit unclear on that). I'm not sure if DC is as adamant about trademarking all their character names as Hasbro, but I have to assume they didn't have the trademark for Bumblebee at any point. As we should all be aware, Hasbro is very intent upon trademarking the names of all their characters, and applying them. That's why some characters are unable to be referred to by their at the time non-trademarked G1 names, because another company owns the TM and Hasbro doesn't want to end up in exactly the situation they're putting DC/Mattel in. (though again, this calls into question how they got away with all the Bumblebee toys between 2006 and 2015 when another company had the TM to the name)
Also I would like to point out, the issue in question is to do with
trademarks, not
copyrights. DC owns the copyright for a shrinking superheroine with bug wings named Bumblebee for use in fiction, and they sublicense that copyright out. The appearance of the character is copyrighted. The name, as applied to toys, is not covered under that copyright.
)
