Hey everyone, it’s attorney Brian Russ coming at you with another episode of Brian’s trademark watch, late on a Friday afternoon but I saw a new trademark application or I should say series of trademark applications come across and I wanted to address them before we went out for the weekend. So it looks like Disney Pixar has a new movie coming out called Disney Pixar Elemental. And there’s a bevy of trademark application filings earlier this week, maybe a few days ago on Disney Pixar Elemental, I think I saw about seven or eight come through, each application was for one individual class. So it’s kind of interesting to see what was going on and see what was happening. What I was surprised about more than anything else was that the name of the movie, Elemental, is such a basic word right. One of the things I always talk to my clients about is the need to have some level of creativity with the brand name, with the mark to ensure that you’re not entering a crowded space. Because when you use a plain English word like Elemental, without any, you know, fanciful qualifiers or additives to it, that makes it that much less likely you’ll get trademark registration, because maybe someone else has already thought of it before. And so it’s one of the reasons I tell people, you’ve got to think kind of wide and broad. Now obviously, you’ve watched these videos before you know that I watch the big brands, your Disney’s, your Warner Brothers, to see what they’re doing. And so I was surprised when this came across and what I found interesting is that, here’s the mark, this isn’t the literal one. This is how it appears Disney Pixar Elemental, it’s just a logo, much easier to get logos done in my opinion. So here’s the trademark application for the movie name. The movie name that they’re trying to trademark notices class 41 for entertainment services. This is the main class where you’re going to see movie names. The movie name that they’re trying to trademark is not Elemental. The movie that they are trying to trademark is Disney Pixar Elemental. You’re looking at me like, I don’t care. What’s the difference? Well the difference is, so right let’s look at the last Pixar movie that came out, Turning Red, we’re going to look at their class 41 application.0 it was just turning red. It was not Disney Pixar Turning Red. It was just turning red. Go down we look at the goods and services, class 41, all this stuff film clips, etc. Disney Pixar Elemental and I got the sneaking suspicion that this is possibly because there might be some concern potentially that there are existing trademarks within the class that are Elemental. And we’re going to go through a few of them. So we have one called Elemental Green, class 41, provide only directories etc, etc. Here we go… entertainment education services for Elemental Green owned by somebody. There is Elemental Plus, though this is a logo but it in the word mark. So this production The mark is elemental that already exists. And guess what class, 41. And then we have just literally the word Elemental. Goods and services, class 41, and then we have Bonda Elemental Mazatlan Sinaloa and if you translate it basically means the band Elemental for Mazatlan Sinaloa, Elemental Fairies, we have Elemental Throne. And so what I’m kind of thinking possibly here with this trademark, with Disney Pixar Elemental, they’re concerned that they’re not really able to trademark the word Elemental, the movie title and so in all their branding and everything they’re going to do so at Disney Pixar Elemental, and what the argument they’re going to make is, because I’m assuming they’re going to get a section 2(b) likelihood of confusion. My guess is, that their argument Disney’s argument is going to be that the consumer is more likely to focus on the first words of the title Disney Pixar, rather than Elemental, and it is likely to not confuse the consumer if all three words are always used together and all marketing and things like that, and that they should get trademark protection for the entire phrase Disney Pixar Elemental, they will argue that they already own Disney, they already own Pixar and but they’re going to use it as one grouping of words rather than just the word Elemental, such as you saw with Turning Red. So, little bit of trademark drama. Maybe this is all hypothetical, this will take 18 months to play out, honestly, maybe two years. I think the Turning Red registration hasn’t even issued yet because it got held up. So you see that a lot of times where they don’t get the trademark protection yet, but they will eventually get it most likely. Again, big props to the Disney crew. I know. I know that they know what they’re doing. So we’ll see what happens. All right, Hey, that’s it for this afternoon. Have a good one.