This isn’t a joke.
This isn’t a metaphor for something else.
‘Jesus’ has been trademarked by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since 2007.
An Italian jeans company owns the trademark, and is beginning to crack down on clothing companies that want to use His name in their brand. Remember, it’s not the image of Jesus that they own, but the name.
Jesus Jeans
“Attorneys for the company say their trademark is similar to the trademark owned by Nike, whose namesake is the winged goddess of victory.”
Right. Because that’s the same?
BasicNet, the owner of the trademark, first attempted to register in 1999 and was granted eight years later. Their general counsel had this to say:
“If somebody, small church or even a big church, wants to use ‘Jesus’ for printing a few T-shirts, we don’t care.”
I’m no legal eagle, but if the NFL can stop churches from using “Super Bowl” in advertising their Super Bowl parties, it seems like ‘Jesus Jeans’ could change their stance.
Of course, I’m still scratching my head wondering why the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved it, while numerous other countries have denied the jean companies patent claims.
I’ll let you make the ‘holy’ jean jokes in the comments below.
[via Fox News]
Adam Shields says
Trademark and patent law are bizarre. Clothing designs cannot be patented, only the logo can be trademarked. But I agree this should not have been trademarked. I wonder it is was only the graphic of the logo, not the name.
Eric Dye says
The name. And you’re right, it’s bizarre.
Eric J says
Just to clarify they only own it in the context of clothing, that said usually something that generic wouldn’t be approved (like you said in your article) the best example i can think of is that in the USA we had a cable channel called the Sci-Fi channel that changed their name to the weird spelling of SyFy so that they could have a unique trademarkeable name.
Eric Dye says
Seriously, Eric, I’m pretty sure you know everything. 😉
Raoul Snyman says
The US patent office is a complete farce these days. They accept almost any patent application, and then it is left up to the poor defendants to prove that the patent is invalid. Rounded squares anyone?
Eric Dye says
LOL!