According to Woman challenges Trump 'You're fired' trademark:
WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - Chicago pottery merchant Susan Brenner has a message for real-estate mogul Donald Trump: in the Windy City, she'll do the firing.
Capitalizing on the success of his reality-television show, "The Apprentice," Trump has sought to trademark the phrase "You're Fired!" for use on clothing and casino equipment.
But the copper-maned mogul might want to tread carefully in the Chicago area, where Brenner says she has emblazoned the phrase on plates, mugs, birdhouses and other items in her suburban ceramics studio since 1997.
[...] For Brenner, "You're fired" is a clever pun on the process of painting and glazing ceramics in her Northbrook, Illinois, studio, said attorney Marvin Benn. [...] Brenner is entitled to local trademark protection even though she has not filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Benn said in a telephone interview. [...] Had she filed a patent application, she would be entitled to nationwide protection, he said.
And here I thought, all these years, that patent applications were for inventions, trademark applications were for, well, trademarks. Just goes to show you--the press is as good at IP law as they are at economics and politics. What an idiot. And this example should be of interest to those libertarians who think that, while patent rights, and maybe even copyright, may be problematic, "of course" the state should protect trademark rights.
