From the “mon dieu” department, World Intellectual Property Review reports that “[a] man who has attempted to trademark ‘Je suis Charlie’ in the US has told WIPR he is confident the application will be accepted and that he has sent a cease-and-desist email to the offices of Charlie Hebdo.” As discussed in earlier posts here and here, a number of parties in multiple jurisdictions have filed trademark applications in what are likely futile attempts to claim an exclusive right to the slogan JE SUIS CHARLIE, which was popularized in the aftermath of the January 7 attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris that left twelve people dead. While dozens of parties have filed trademark applications, it appears that only the Je Suis Charlie Trust, the first U.S. applicant, has had the temerity to attempt to stop Charlie Hebdo itself from using the JE SUIS CHARLIE slogan. Even if there appeared to be a reasonable chance that the Je Suis Charlie Trust could successfully register the JE SUIS CHARLIE mark (which, as discussed here and here, seems extremely unlikely), it takes an exceptionally grandiose sense of entitlement to threaten legal action against the surviving victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack for using a slogan derived from the magazine’s own name and intended to show support for both the deceased victims and the publication’s raison d'être. Of course, lawyers would have a lot less billable work if everyone had good judgment. Read the full article here.

By Joachim Roncin (proof), Charlie Hebdo (charliehebdo.fr) Typefaces authors: Mark van Bronkhorst (Sweet Sans Heavy), H. Hoffman/H. Berthold (Block Condensed) (Joachim Roncin’s tweet, PDF adapted to SVG.) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Reposted from World Intellectual Property Review.