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Comedian changes name to Hugo Boss to challenge trademark law
- bloak 7y agoThis has nothing to do with copyright.
- pysxul 7y agoHe did it because Hugo boss is suing tons of small business with a name including "BOSS" in order to hurt them financially.
- OJFord 7y agoI think GP means that it's a (probably registered) trademark, which is distinct from 'copyright'.
- thom 7y agoAnd, at the very least, it means that Hugo can't get a passport using his new name: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/548220/Annex_A_passports_August_2016.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- Angostura 7y agoIt should also be pointed out that the Deed Poll pictured isn't an official document in any meaningful sense. In the UK, you pretty much change your name by starting to use a new name and telling all the official bodies that you have done so - and asking for new paperwork in that name (including passports etc). These Deed Poll forms are produced by any number of paralegal-esque companies and are useful to include when writing to your bank/utility conpany, but that's about it.
- codeulike 7y agoTo be precise: You will need a Deed Poll, which is a piece of paper with certain words on it, and it needs to be signed and witnessed, but you can make one yourself and you dont need an official body or lawyer to do it.
- Angostura 7y agoCorrect - and here are the certain words. https://www.gov.uk/change-name-deed-poll/make-an-adult-deed-poll https://www.gov.uk/change-name-deed-poll/make-an-adult-deed-... “I [old name] of [your address] have given up my name [old name] and have adopted for all purposes the name [new name]. “Signed as a deed on [date] as [old name] and [new name] in the presence of [witness 1 name] of [witness 1 address], and [witness 2 name] of [witness 2 address]. “[your new signature], [your old signature] “[witness 1 signature], [witness 2 signature]”
- arethuza 7y agoThere does appear to be a central process for doing it in Scotland: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration/recording-change-of-forename-and-surname-in-scotland https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration/recording-change-... Edit: Being married to Scots law lawyer I feel obliged to point these things out any time I see a mention of a "UK" legal system... ;-)
- Angostura 7y agoAs an English person, I would like to both apologise and thank you for pointing out the difference and challenging my default assumption.
- OJFord 7y agoGood point, though it does make me wonder what happens if your name (say, from birth, or even if not) predates the trademark. Does trademark registration similarly check against registered births? And deaths (to allow them again, if no new births)?
- bloak 7y agoThat's a strange rule! It's the definite article in "the owner of that trademark" that confuses me. The same word could be a registered trademark in each of about 45 classes, with a different owner for each mark. Perhaps the next logical step for this comedian is to find a class in which Hugo Boss is not registered and register his own trademark in that class. Then he can give himself permission to use his own name. Or something. I actually have no idea how the rule in the the linked document would be applied in practice. Perhaps in practice they don't care about trademarks if the name is an ordinary name, like "John Smith", for example. Which is almost certainly also a trademark ... I've just checked (https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext): JOHN SMITH matches a bunch of different trademarks, and if you include JOHN SMITH'S then there are even more of them.
- bgeeek 7y agoI thought I read somewhere that they were suing charities (?), which if true leaves me feeling it’s not so much of a bad thing that he’s doing.
- frostburg 7y agoIt's a brand that built its success on nazi collaborationism, its extremely hard to feel sorry about any struggle it might have.
- buran77 7y agoThis is quite a gross generalization. Do you often get judged for the sins of your predecessors? And if you buy anything from Ford, Mercedes, Porsche, Siemens, IBM, Kodak, Volkswagen, Bayer, Allianz, Coca Cola (yes, that Coca Cola), Chase, Standard Oil (Exxon, BP, Chevron) and many, many others what does that say about your principles?
- Y-bar 7y agoOne isn’t allowed to criticise one wrongdoing without also making sure to expressively criticise every other similar wrongdoing? Is that what we have come to?
- buran77 7y agoI didn't ask them to criticize, just if they feel the same about every similar brand. I guess it all depends on how you define hypocrisy.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ed_balls 7y agoand Apple is using slave labor TODAY https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22457389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22457389
- deleted 7y ago
- rjmunro 7y agoYes. It is about trademarks. They tend to get bundled together with patents and sometimes even trade secrets and named "intellectual property", but a trademark is a very different thing.
- pysxul 7y agoI would like to bring everyone's attention on his top notch new signature
- Maximus9000 7y agoSimilar to Gavin Belsons https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6KbRA2RjhgQ/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6KbRA2RjhgQ/maxresdefault.jpg
- kjakm 7y ago1. It's a trademark issue, not copyright. 2. Don't companies have an obligation to defend their trademark or risk not being able to defend them in the future?
- matsemann 7y agoRef 2, it's often explained as "you didn't defend it against X last year, so now you cannot attack me for using it", but I think it's wrong. You don't have to defend it every time. But if you let it slide too many times, the trademark can become dilluted with other meanings/uses over time, making it a common word you cannot defend. Or so.
- blackandblue 7y agowrt #2, you are right. but i have read and learned crazy things like you can't have part of their name in your own products or company names. or again, you can't use their main colors for branding. ridiculous!
- ryanplant-au 7y agoHis accusation is that Hugo Boss are going well beyond reasonable defense of their trademark, by suing businesses in entirely unrelated industries that use either 'Hugo' or 'Boss' in their names or their product names. One example he cited was Boss Brewing, a Welsh brewery who said they spent about £30,000 / 38,200 USD on legal costs and rebranding after being targeted by Hugo Boss. They're also alleged to have sent cease and desists about surfboards, speakers, knives, and treadmills for having 'boss' in the name. It's hard to argue that those weaken the Hugo Boss trademark. He has a show about consumer rights ("Joe Lycett's Got Your Back", which I suppose will be "Hugo Boss's Got Your Back" next season) so it's in his wheelhouse.
- tomhoward 7y ago> His accusation is that Hugo Boss are going well beyond reasonable defense of their trademark The problem is that this question ultimately hinges on a court's judgment, and they can't know in advance what evidence of "reasonable defense of their trademark" will satisfy all the judges in all the cases where this issue is examined. So from the trademark-holder's point of view, the approach has to be to do everything they can to be seen by the courts to be doing anything necessary to defend their brand; particularly for such a big/valuable brand like Hugo Boss, it's too risky to do anything less. When you talk to people in these kinds of companies privately, they don't personally care at all if some largely-unrelated small business somewhere has a name that is vaguely reminiscent of theirs, and they'd rather not have to waste time and money taking action against them. These indignant reactions always happen when a big corporate is seen to be bullying small, defenceless companies over trademarks, but on this topic it's a case of "don't hate the player, hate the game".
- nineteen999 7y agoOn a tangent here, a bit over 20 years ago I used to work for a guy who registered "boss.com.xx" (where xx is a country TLD I won't detail) because that was the name of his publishing company here. This was still dialup/ISDN days for most small companies over here. He held on to it for a long time, but I noticed in the last couple of years that it now redirects to www.hugoboss.com. Knowing this particular person I am fairly sure that he would have sold it to them for a pretty penny.
- cs02rm0 7y agoI'm not sure the list of countries that use com.xx is particularly long. And the the list of those with that redirect is even shorter (one?!) Perhaps there's opportunity to bag the few others and drop them an offer. =)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- aliswe 7y agoA lot of large companies I've worked with do not care to overtake domains with matching names, and sometimes do not even contact the owners to get a quote.
- nkrisc 7y agoI wonder if he can then license his likeness and name for a nominal cost to anyone who wants to use it.
- save_ferris 7y agoThere have been some insanely aggressive trademark cases in the US too. The University of Kentucky sued a small moonshine distiller for selling t-shirts that had the word ‘Kentucky’ printed on them.[0] That’s it, having the name of the state they resided in was enough to trigger Kentucky athletics. The shirts weren’t trying to knock off or reference Kentucky Athletics in any way, but that didn’t stop UK from putting legal resources behind their effort. Yet another example of how the legal system is built for the rich. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/us/-legal-moonshiner-and-university-battle-over-rights-to-kentucky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/us/-legal-moonshiner-and-...
- mcv 7y agoI really hope this got laughed out of court as hard as possible. It should only be a trademark issue when they're likely to be confused. That's not remotely likely here.
- justaguyhere 7y agoUK will likely lose, but what will it change though? The little guy has to spend time and money defending themselves and go through the stress that comes along with it. UK probably will write the costs off and sue someone else.
- grimjack00 7y agoPerhaps the United Kingdom will sue University of Kentucky for using "UK"; let the university know what it feels like to be the little guy.
- save_ferris 7y agoAgreed. In cases like this, I wish we had legislation that required trademark holders to defend all alleged violations unilaterally or something, because selectively going after certain cases creates a terrible power imbalance. If the university feels so strongly about protecting their trademark with regard to apparel, they should have to file cases against everyone who violates it, nor just certain individuals or organizations.
- tdy_err 7y agoDuplicate https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22466552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22466552