Is it Possible to Trademark your Name?

Kim Kardashian wants to trademark the name of her children North West, Chicago West and Saint West. Tom Brady and his team tried to trademark his nickname- “Tom Terrific”. CNBC reports that Donald Trump, his company, and family owns over 1000 trademarks such as “Trump Tower” and “Fifth Avenue” to name a few.

These days, it is quite common for celebrities to trademark their names and catchphrases. But before understanding the reason for this, it is important to understand what exactly a trademark is and how trademarks are a means to profit.

A trademark is any mark such as a name, a symbol, of late catchphrases and even sounds that distinguish one product from another. The swoosh sign of Nike is an example of a trademark. A trademark offers an exclusive right to use such a name, sign, symbol, or sound. If any person or entity infringes a registered trademark, a suit may be instituted against them for claiming compensation. The purpose of trademark protection is to reward innovation and prevent unfair trade practices like sale of inferior quality products through unauthorized use of trademarks.

Trademarks are of the following types:

• Generic: These are generic names of the goods. As a hypothetical example, it means when a Telephone is trademarked as “Telephone”.

• Suggestive: This type of trademarks suggests a characteristic of a product. For example, Microsoft suggests software for small computers.

• Descriptive: This type of trademark describes the characteristics of a product. For example, American Airlines is a descriptive trademark.

• Arbitrary: This type of trademark has no relation to the product. For example, the name “Apple” has no relation to the phone the company sells.

• Inventive: This type of trademark denotes a word that is newly coined. For example, “Kellogg’s” is a new word invented for the cereal brand.

For registering a trademark, an application must be made to the appropriate trademark registry. The office will check whether the applied trademark resembles an existing trademark or not and thereupon approves the registration or rejects it. If a trademark is registered, it is valid for a specific period after which it must be renewed. Even though a trademark is not registered, a dispute may be raised of trademark infringement. However, in such a case, prior use of the mark has to be proved by the party claiming infringement.

Celebrities who register trademarks do it because they can profit off their identity. When a celebrity uses their registered catchphrase on a t-shirt or on a product or as a product name, no other person can replicate and sell such a product without inviting legal action. A trademark prevents other people from using the mark without authorization. For example, Greta Thunberg sought to register her hashtag #FridaysforFuture to prevent others from using the hashtag for commercial purposes without her consent.

Application for proposed use of trademark can also be made. Kim Kardashian trying to trademark the name of her children is an example of this. Here, she intends to reserve the trademark so that if her children (or Kim herself on the kids’ behalf) start a product line, the trademark registration part is already covered. Moreover, the competitors will not have their hands over this trademark. In a way, this proposed use of mark registration gives a first mover advantage to the future brand.

However, despite there being a lot of news about celebrities applying for trademark registration, few clear the registration process. This is because the registry rejects marks if they are similar to an existing mark or if there is no actual use for the trademark registration. Donald Trump’s phrase “You’re fired” was rejected from trademark registration because it resembled the mark of the game “You’re Hired”.

The stars are however not discouraged from applying for trademark registration due to rejections from the registry. Creativity knows no bounds and we will see the stars getting much more innovative with their proposed trademarks in the future.