a music blog with the occasional splash of text
Time for a little story, shall we? Two girls started a blog last year, let’s call it MyCoolBeansLife. They blog because they enjoy it. Let’s say that one girl decides to go back to school and muses in a blog post: “I might start a separate blog for that, but it won’t be CoolBeansStudent, because apparently a blog already has that name”, with a link to the other person’s blog.
Considering that “cool beans” is a pretty widely known and used phrase (for example, my boyfriend uses it fairly often), these things happen and they’re no big deal, right? Apparently not.
The MyCoolBeansLife girls get a comment on an entry from the CoolBeansStudent, basically telling them to C&D. Why? Because CoolBeansStudent decided that they wanted to have all of the rights to CoolBeans[whatever] to themselves. Does CoolBeansStudent own the trademark to KickButtLife? No, but they are trying to file it right now. Was the filing done after MyCoolBeansLife was started? That information wasn’t given, but I would assume the filing is newer than the buying of MyCoolBeansLife.com. Another bit is that “CoolBeans” is already a registered trademark to a third company.
I’m no law expert, but I would that since MyCoolBeansLife existed much before CoolBeansStudent tried to file a trademark for CoolBeansLife, the girls from MyCoolBeansLife would come out on top. It’s not possible to file trademark on something that already exists, as far as I know.
Another issue is how common “cool beans” is. It would be a little different if someone tried to start a blog called, say, TheTzurinLife. Tzurin is a word that I made up. Doing a Google search, the only other results I find for it are the city (town?) of Rio Tzurin, it’s one girl in Israel’s last name, and a character in a Naruto fanfiction. If someone with that last name started TheTzurinLife, that would be fine because, well, it’s their last name. It’s not right for me to try to take that away from them. But if I wanted to start, say, PostGradLife, and someone tried to make me use another name because they were PostGradMoney, there’s less standing because “post grad” is a generic term, and you can’t file a trademark on generics.
Who is in the right here? Of course the “MyCoolBeansLife” people are my friends, but I really do believe that “CoolBeansStudent” doesn’t have ground to make them change their blog’s name. It really seems like a bully tactic to me, like nothing more than the most popular girl in high school trying to convince a less popular girl to not buy a certain prom dress because the most popular girl in school wants to wear it, despite the fact the other girl found and bought it first.
Who do you think is in the right here? If you were in this situation, how would you respond?
Blog names have been changed to protect everyone. I changed the larger blog’s name much more than my friends’ blog, FYI.
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3 Responses
Sean Cook on 11-03-2010 at 2:12 pm
If this was me, I would tell them to have their lawyer contact me with proof of a *current* registered service mark or trademark, so I could refer the matter in its entirety to my attorney, and then see whether I could file a protest of their trademark application. If it looked like I was going to lose the argument, though, I would have the attorney help me decide on what amount would make it worthwhile to settle out of court and then I would have the attorney present that, and I would find some other name for my blog. But comments on a blog are not a compelling enough reason to comply with a random request like this. Best of luck to your friends.
Paul on 11-03-2010 at 2:29 pm
I think they are full of themselves (but I am not a lawyer). I doubt very much they have any legal standing on the phrase “cool beans”. Just doing a google search produced pages of references that where not to any blog mentioned by you.
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From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark):
The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.
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Since the geographical area we are refering too is the “Internet” , I think they are playing legal roulet hoping your friendd do not know their own rights. They can also not selectively go after one party in particular . Unless they are seeking legal action against all infirngers they can not seek legal action against any.
coolbeans.com
coolbeansdesigns.com
coolbeanscoffeeroasters.com
coolbeanscool.blogspot.com
catrinaiscoolbeans.com
coolbeanscoffeeco.com
coolbeanscoffeecafe.com
coolbeansmusic.com
charlatanconsultant on 11-03-2010 at 2:35 pm
This is crap. This reminds me of Lindsay Lohan suing eTrade for their baby commercial. The guys threatening have no grounds, especially since onlin IP Law gets really fuzzy on things like this. And the fact that “coolbeans” is pretty common makes this even more realistic. Your friends should call their bluff and and like Sean said tell them to have their attorneys powow if they are really serious about it.