Duffman says “Oooooh No” (in Spanish)

Duff Beer Trademark

So, you might not be aware of this, but ‘Duff Beer’ (yes, that one from the Simpsons) has actually been at the centre of a fairly long running trademark dispute, particularly in the EU. You can read more about that here from the nice people at Wikipedia. But while according to google the world seems to have largely lost interest in the story and the trademark, actually the drama rolls on. As it stands, 20th Century Fox DO have a trademark for Duff Beer registered across the EU, but somewhat ironically, not for alcoholic beer. This is it here: BUT, that application is now under fire from Duff beverage GmbH, a German company who are in a right huff. They (Duff beverage GmbH) had applied for this Tradmark themselves… …which twentieth century fox in turn opposed. But it looked like they were kissing and making up in September of last year, when the jointly filed this:   Awwwww…….. Until April of this year 2016, when: [embeddoc url=”https://brianconroy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/141685471.pdf” download=”none”] Ooooh no. As a result of all this legal shenanigans, here’s what the EU Trademark registry looks like for ‘Duff Beer’ (look at the right hand column) And while all that’s very interesting and looks amusing and what not, LOOK at the application that was filed yesterday by someone completely different by the looks of it… Bahahahaha, that will set both Twentieth Century Fox AND Duff beverage GmbH off on a right one I would have thought! And what’s very clever (sneaky, depending on how you look at it) is that rather than calling their application ‘Duff Beer’ which is obviously going to set off warning bells all over the place, those two ‘ff’s are being called a h, so it’s “Duh Red” rather than “Duff Red”…like so: Just so we’re clear, when you go to register an EUTM you get this option: For something like ‘Duff Beer’ you register a ‘figurative mark containing word elements’, which brings you to this screen, where you type in the words….which is where someone typed in DUH Red rather than Duff Red. Ah lads, stop it. These DUH Red lads want registration for the following: So, that’s going to be an issue. And just when you think this story couldn’t possibly get more amusing (yes, law CAN be amusing) here’s some of the OTHER trademarks that this crowd have also applied for…..which have been opposed (shockingly)   And the most recent one which hasn’t YET been opposed, but surely will be: