Forum - View topicINTEREST: FAKKU to Contest Shenzhen Guangcai Trading's 'Ahegao' Trademark
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I_Drive_DSM
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I have no fight in this argument, but I will point out that 'ahegao' is a different type of word than something like say a smile or fart that was mentioned. 'Ahegao' is a combination of two different Japanese words to form a new word, a he ア ヘ combined, written in katakana, and gao 顔 in kanji, an onomatopoeia and a noun respectively. In an overly technical aspect, 'ahegao' is a uniquely and newly formed compound word that just so happens to have onomatopoeia attached to it.
Onomatopoeia has been trademarked, and there are many many examples of it. Homer Simpson's "D'oh!" for example is an onomatopoeia that has been trademarked. MGM's lion roar is under trademark. There is precedence that can be argued to trademark onomatopoeia by itself, and the combination of 'ahegao' is effective onomatopoeia and the English equivalence of an adjective (it's describing a silly face). Where it becomes REALLY interesting is this bit RenimLS posted from the Trademark Electronic Search System...
.... Of course it doesn't. Again, 'ahegao' is アヘ and 顔 combined to form a unique new word, and ahegao is a literal reading, not the translated words (ex: o-face, silly face, whatever). But here comes the icing on the cake. Japanese manga artists likely would not be writing A H E G A O letters anyways; they're going to write アヘ顔 in their titles. Think of the opposite that could exist. Nissan, Honda, Toyota, for examples; those are all trademarked in English words and type-fonts, but my assumption - without looking into details - is any kanji or similar attached to these is not. Here may be another good way to think of it. Fart is not trademarked, but how about "pfffffttttt" or "buuurrrr"? Could those two be potentially trademarked in some way? "Pft", "buurr", "rriipp" I know I'll probably be critiqued on this and trust me that's quite okay, but again, I think this is a bit genius, it's unfortunate it took someone this long to realize they could do this, and it may set a VERY dangerous precedence going forward. |
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