Trademark Vs Copyright?

Hi there,

I'm really hoping someone can help me,

Our UK company owns a fictional character that was sold to a US firm without our consent. The US publisher kept the characters visual image but changed the name, they subsequently went into liquidation, at the liquidation sale another US firm bought the copyright via an illegal assignation.

Since then the new buyer has a live US trademark application (which is being opposed) which is essentially being applied to a copyrighted character that they don't own.

I guess my question is this,
What happens if someone register's a trademark to a character (that's not in the US public domain) without the worldwide copyright owners consent?

Many thanks in advance.


Janis x

Janis -

There are way too many questions here to even begin to speculate "what happens." If you've filed for opposition with regard to a trademark, then you've got a bridge to which you haven't yet arrived. It's quite likely that, if all is as you say, the mark will be denied as they don't have rights to ownership. It sounds like you have representation by counsel and that is a necessity here. Best of luck.

PS - note that trademark is not copyright. Copyright deals with the underlying work of authorship, the actual cartoon character itself. With regard to trademark, it is the ability to say that this cartoon character is a designation of an origin, e.g. the manufacturer of a good. Here, if the company doesn't even own a copyrighted work, it would be difficult to show how they could lawfully use that work as their trade mark. Make sense?

Thelawprofessor reply makes sense to me - trademark is not copyright. A trademark is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. Trademark rights maybe used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark.

Thanks for clarifying, Alina. Let us know how this turns out.