Today, we’re going to discuss Trademarks and / or Wordmarks. I went to the Philippine Intellectual Property Rights Office (IPOPhl) website to search for trademarks or wordmarks that include the terms “anime“, “otaku“, and yes, “cosplay“.
First and foremost, why we are talking about these kinds of stuff? Patents, wordmarks and / or trademarks are such that can be considered as household names, but it’s not just one thing that you slap on the IPO in an easy way — filing these things take a lot of time, cash, blood in the nose (since everything you’ll have to file shall be in legalese, with an overdose of walls of text) and sweat (because they need you to come to their office to file for a claim), but you can file one online. It also has classifications with a nice name, which is the Nice Classification. Most trademarks last for a decade upon registration.
Without further adieu, let’s begin.
Anime
When I tried to search “anime” in the field, I was very much surprised that there is now an application for “Anime Festival Asia” to be trademarked (lodged just last April) and I checked in the file record, it’s the main organizer Sozo Pte. Ltd. who filed it through a local law firm. We’ve talked about AFA and their pending visit to Manila, so chances are AFA PHL may come soon enough, probably by next year. Those who were disapointed when Animax Carnival Philippines 2013 was cancelled weeks before the December 8 date should be bracing for more impact soon.
We posted this with an image on our Facebook as soon as I saw that.
Remember Hero TV‘s segments Anime 101, AniMyx and Anime of the Month? They’re also trademarked under Creative Programs, Inc., which owns the cable channel.
Ozine, our partner Anime Alliance, Anime Overload Festival (which is the first anime event I’ve been to), Telesuccess Productions’ Anime Club (I didn’t knew they owned the name), and even Mr. Softy was included in the results.
Cosplay
Save Cosplay.ph for the Cosplay wordmarks — we’ve seen that before — what we should look up now is that Hero Face-Off: The Ultimate Cosplay Battle now has a record in the IPO. Looking at the document registered, it says there the following:
- Disclaimer: NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE THE PHRASE “THE ULTIMATE COSPLAY BATTLE” APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN.
- Status: Published for opposition
I wonder what that means. We need assistance from the patent attorneys.
Otaku
Nothing to see here though — both of them are Ozine, which we have introduced to you before.
Now that we’ve revealed something about these, it’s your turn to (ab)use the IPO trademark Search located at the IPO PHL website. We’ve shared you this piece of reference knowing that this might help you in some way or another.