Wednesday, March 2, 2016

This Trademark Dispute is Not Funny

Apparently, there are two Comic Cons.  There is the San Diego Comic-Con and the Salt Lake Comic Con (note the hyphenation and lack thereof). As you may have guessed, the San Diego outfit sued the Salt Lake one for trademark infringement.  One of the main questions was whether the removal of the hyphen in the name mattered.  Usually, it would not. Unsurprisingly, the San Diego convention argued that it owned all iterations of "comic con" in all of its possible variants.  The Salt Lake one countered that the term is a general term for the type of convention, and therefore, is not trademarkable.

Nevertheless, it appears that these two conventions are working on a settlement because they asked the judge for more time to iron out some of the details.