This Post Is Trademarked For Your Protection

July 6th, 2007 Davis Posted in Technology, DivX, Slingbox, Microsoft, TiVo, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix |

I’ll never be enough of a legal expert, to be able to tell the exact differences between copyrights, trademarks and patents, but I do know enough about each, to know that each level, involves a different amount of paperwork, as well as different legal protections.

While, I may not be able to fully appreciate all of the subtle differences between the three, what I do know about trademarks and patents, is that in order to get one, you have to make them available to the general public. This makes the US Patent and Trademark site, a gold mine for trying to find information on companies.

A trademark application won’t always tell you what’s going on at a company, but every now and then, there are morsels of information that leak out. You can also learn a lot about a company’s past, by looking at trademarks that they used to hold, but have let lapsed.

Recently, I was doing some research at the USPTO website and while I was there, I decided to put in the names of a few of the companies that I follow. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but knew that there would be at least a few interesting trademarks out there. While I didn’t discover any earth shattering revelations, I did find a few highlights, buried in all of the paperwork.

Netflix

Not a lot of surprises, when I ran Netflix’s name through the database. They own the trademark for their domain of course, as well as a trademark on their Friend’s feature. They also used to own a trademark for the terms, Mr. DVD and Cinematch (although these trademarks are currently listed as having been abandoned.)

I know that Netflix has named their movie recommendation system Cinematch, so that makes sense, but from reading the trademark filings, it sounds like Mr. DVD may have also been considered as the name of their recommendation engine, at one point.

DivX

DivX has several trademarks including OpenDivx, Stage6, and most recently DivXConnected. On the trademark website, they also include several of the logos, that they will use for DivX Connected, including the one that they blurred out when they announced the launch of their private beta for the connected program.

Under their dead trademark listings, the USPTO lists the terms, Dr. DivX, Mastermind and Carpe Visum, as abandoned trademarks. Even though these terms are listed as dead, I wasn’t entirely clear on what this meant, because I know that Dr. DivX is still in use. It could be that it’s just a logo that is expired or it may be that like, ProjectMayo, DivX is migrating away from the Dr. DivX trademark.

Movie Gallery

If Movie Gallery can’t figure a way out of their most recent situation, their trademarks may soon belong to their bond holders instead of the stock holders, but I did find it interesting to see that, Movie Gallery recently trademarked the term True Choice. True Choice is supposed to be their new program, that may or may not include MovieBeam, online dvd rentals and/or in-store rentals.

I also found it interesting that they own a trademark on a logo that reads “NC-55 No Children Under 55.”, as well as the term Gameapalooza. I’m not sure how Perry Farrell would feel about them using the lollapalooza name, but at least Movie Gallery has something for the whole family, in their trademark filings.

Some of Movie Gallery’s dead trademarks included VideoGallery+ and TradeZone. I’m pretty sure that VideoGallery+ was a company the Movie Gallery acquired a long time ago and that TradeZone is the name of a service where you can buy and sell pre-owned DVDs.

Sling Media

Sling didn’t have any dead trademarks, but they’ve already managed to rack up a few live ones. Two weeks ago, the trademark Slingstream and SlingPlayer were opened up for opposition and last January, they filed for a trademark application for the phrase Sling Clip, Sling Catcher and Sling Projector. These are all new technologies that they’ve announced.

Sling also owns a trademark on the phrase, “Where do you want to watch your TV?” I’m not sure if they are still using this phase in their advertisements, but pretty soon, they’ll also be able to ask, where do you want to watch your internet?

TiVo

TiVo has a couple of interesting trademarks, including one for the term Mevo (or MiVo), as well as a dead trademark on the ominous sounding, Viewergraphic Profiling System.

Some of my favorite ones were for the term TiVoMatic, the expression “Primetime Anytime” and an abandoned claim on “You’ve Got TiVo.” While TiVo wasn’t fast enough to get the trademark on the iPhone (like Cisco did $$$), they did manage to secure a trademark for the less lucrative term iPreview. While normally something like this would get me all fired up for another Apple + TiVo post, unfortunately this trademark was filed in 1999, so if it did signal that any hanky panky was going on, it’s safe to say that the relationship has cooled since then.

Blockbuster Video

A search for trademarks on Blockbuster brings up 341 search results. A lot of them are past marketing campaigns or are from companies that they acquired. There were a few trademarks though, that hinted at how Blockbuster might end up marketing their digital strategy.

Over the last year, they’ve been award three trademarks for the the phrase “rated D for _______ (download, digital or deliver).” Interestingly enough, I also found a trademark for the term “Circus Fresh”. I had thought that Blockbuster only sold pre-packaged candy, but the trademark suggests that Blockbuster might be selling their own brand of cotton candy in their stores.

Among some of Blockbuster’s abandoned terms were the name Clockbusters, Kidmongous & Blockbuster on Demand. I can see why they gave up Clockbusters, but I think they should have stuck with Kidmongous. It’s a great description for all of the energy that kids seem to have.

iRobot

Most of iRobot’s trademark terms were very familiar to me. There was the Scooba, the PackBot and of course the Roomba, but they also had one trademark that I had never heard of before.

It was for the unusual term LOOJ and was filed last March. I’m not sure how they plan on marketing a name that I’m not sure how to pronounce, but the trademark describes the LOOJ as “remotely controlled cleaning devices”. I’m not exactly sure how to interpret this, but it would be really cool, if I could use a wireless remote to tell my Scooba where it needs to be cleaning. This would make it more like a traditional vacuum than a robot, but there are times where it would be nice to be able to direct iRobot’s cleaning missions.

Apple

A search for Apple trademarks, yields over 1900 different results. Unfortunately, the search includes any company with Apple in their name, so it’s not an accurate count of how many they actual have. Apple has a trademark for just about anything you can think of. They have things like iPod of course, but I had never heard of the Storpod? They have even trademarked the use of the word Keynote at conferences.

Microsoft

Microsoft came back with a little over 1,800 trademark results. I guess when you’ve got as many lawyers as they do, they hand out trademarks like candy. As a digital TV enthusiast, I couldn’t help, but notice that their Microsoft TV trademark came back as abandoned. I doubt that this signals that Microsoft is giving up on the living room though, because they had a number of active “media room” trademarks.

Some of the more creative trademarks that I saw were for a mobile phone service that they are testing right now, called Deepfish. There was also one for some kind of a strange board game named Carbonated Games. I’m not sure how you play, but I suspect that the game may have played a large role in the initial creation of Microsoft’s source code.

Microsoft also recently submitted a trademark for the term Spynet. I’m sure that this is just some kind of anti-spyware technology, but it’s name sounds even more disturbing than TiVo’s Viewergraphic monitoring system.

It’d be a lot easier to monitor these things, if the USPTO offered RSS feeds, but I don’t mind checking back once in a while for an update. While, my post only covered a few of the trademarks on companies, I follow, I would be interested in knowing what else is buried in that massive database. With so many companies and so many catch phrases, I could probably spend all day at the site, and would still be able to find out about programs or marketing campaigns that I had never heard of.

Disclosure - I own stock in TiVo and Netflix