Comedian changes name to Hugo Boss to challenge trademark law

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9MhjgphNWj/?igshid=1f85pcqneulx6

by aSig • 6 years ago

78 39 6 years ago

bloak2• 6 years ago

This has nothing to do with copyright.

pysxul2• 6 years ago

He did it because Hugo boss is suing tons of small business with a name including "BOSS" in order to hurt them financially.

OJFord2• 6 years ago

I think GP means that it's a (probably registered) trademark, which is distinct from 'copyright'.

bgeeek• 6 years ago

I 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.

rjmunro• 6 years ago

Yes. 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.

pysxul2• 6 years ago

I would like to bring everyone's attention on his top notch new signature

Maximus9000• 6 years ago

Similar to Gavin Belsons

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6KbRA2RjhgQ/maxresdefault.jpg

kjakm• 6 years ago

1. 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• 6 years ago

Ref 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• 6 years ago

wrt #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• 6 years ago

His 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.

tomhoward2• 6 years 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".

wombatpm• 6 years ago

Yes but..

There was a time when McDonald's was being a major jerk about trademark lawsuits. Then THE MCDONALD of the the clan MCDONALD had a talk with them about being reasonable. Haven't been as many stupid lawsuits since then . . .

nineteen999• 6 years ago

On 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.

cs02rm02• 6 years ago

I'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. =)

zenexer2• 6 years ago

If you do that, you’ll be facing a UDRP. You’ll be out a domain plus legal fees.

aliswe• 6 years ago

A 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• 6 years ago

I wonder if he can then license his likeness and name for a nominal cost to anyone who wants to use it.

save_ferris2• 6 years ago

There 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-...

mcv2• 6 years ago

I 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• 6 years ago

UK 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.

tdy_err• 6 years ago

Duplicate

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22466552

Comedian changes name to Hugo Boss to challenge trademark law

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