Yet Again Someone Tries to Benefit from the Tragedy, This Time from George Floyd’s Name

Surprisingly, we live in an era where humanity intertwines with business. Welfare organizations and all these humanitarian establishments’ functions on charities and donations, nevertheless, only a few of them are truly working for the ultimate purpose. By adopting illicit tactful means, some tycoons mint private money from their front-faced generous public helping bodies. Take the most-recent events like the pandemic and the death of George Floyd as an instance, where marketers are making profits out of tragedies in full throttle.

The present blog comes in continuation with the previous one as one more person tries to eventually gain profits from the misfortune. As is known, today the name George Floyd is internationally recognized and hence, is worth a lot of money. Result of this, an American person is attempting to capitalize the name of the deceased for movies and television purposes.

As can be spotted in United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database, a man named Munemo Mushonga residing at Rhode Island, has filed a trademark application for the term ‘George Floyd’ for the purpose of “production and distribution of television shows and movies” on June 05.

A further enquiry into the application suggests, the street address of the applicant is somewhere in Miami, Florida, which as a matter of fact, is a construction office and has no linkage whatsoever, with entertainment business. Moreover, neither the applicant nor his family has any connection with the movie and television industry. All these facts are merely enhancing the muddle with regards to intention behind the application. When asked about the reason or the inspiration before filing such application by TMZ, Mushonga was all mum and refused to provide any further details about the matter.

Yet the application is only a small hurdle, acceptance of the same by the USPTO is actually the one to ponder upon. Firstly, in order to attain trademark registration for a personal name, be it a common name or the name of a reputed celebrity, the connection of the same must be shown with the goods and services applied for. Furthermore, the applicant must substantiate a “secondary meaning” for acquiring protection. At present, all these requirements seem to be lacking, even so let’s stay tuned for further developments in this trade-name challenge.