Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!
Description
Due to possible concerns of legal issues with Coco Chanel, Coco Pommel will henceforth be known as “Miss Pommel”.
Nah, more the opposite going on, really; moves being made so that if an artist doesn’t pay lawyers to copyright their work in a registery, a company can just take it for themselves as an “orphaned work”, declare themselves the owners, and profit from it. Because lawyers.
Any move towards making copyright less restrictive or punishing or convoluted means lawyers have less power and less “work”. And guess what two groups write up the rules on these things and have the money to buy out politicians? Big IP holders like Disney, and lawyers.
The system is super fucked and honestly I can’t see any way it’ll change. Maybe if people like Sanders start getting elected more often, but as it stands, with politics by the dollar as it seems to be going, nope; if you’re a for-profit politician (and almost all of them are), you’re not going to stand up against massive corporations for such a “soft” issue like copyright.
This guy gets it.
I don’t suppose there’s any organizations working on possible reformations to current copyright and trademark law to bring a measure of sanity to them, allowing people and companies to profit from what they create while still protecting others from overzealous legal actions?
What a bunch of chickens.
I’d have to assume it’s the substantial similarity of the full name and its use in relationship to fashion.
Is it the full name, or just ‘Coco’? I ask because I was thinking about it earlier: maybe they could do something a la Drawn Together and get around the trademark by never referring to the character by their full name at the same time.
No, but that’s entirely irrelevant. The fact that the law requires that trademarks must be protected will have made Hasbro’s legal team jumpy enough to require the change to avoid even the possibility of a lawsuit.
It’s really not a big deal, it’s just that a lot of people get (justifiably) annoyed by changes they see as being pointless or unnecessary, and some of those people are easily ~triggered~ by the mere possibility of Smooth Jazz Waluigis being involved with anything and respond by pitching fits and making big deals out of things that aren’t. This ain’t even close to a Derpy/Muffins level bowdlerization, where they struck all mention of a character’s name from the record and tried to edit her defining characteristics out of her appearances; all they did was stop officially using Coco’s first name onscreen and in merchandise. It’s a teapot tempest that nobody will care about anymore after the Season Finale.
People don’t like it when names have to be changed or used differently because of copyright and trademarks.
See Derpy/Muffins
What the fyay is the big deal about her being known as “Miss Pommel” instead of “Coco Pommel”?
Lawyers are like guns; you may or may not like the idea of them, but you sure as hell don’t want to get caught without one if the other guy brought one with him.
That’s why lawyers are the worst.
I can’t imagine what they were thinking. “Oh hey, there’s a fictional cartoon horse who’s name is similar to Coco Chanel.”
A shame the one of the guys at Hasbro kinda chickened out though. I mean yeah it’s being safe but at three same time your just empowering them because your basically admitting your fear.
Tell it to the lawyers. I imagine it had more to do with a name that was substantially similar to “Coco Chanel”– which is a protected trademark– being applied to a character engaged in the same industry as the trademark holder, possibly magnified by Hasbro/DHX employees having confirmed in social media that the character was indeed named as a reference to that trademark.
I seriously doubt the connection was solid enough that a suit pursuing damages would have gotten very far, but lawyers are a twitchy folk, and one of Hasbro’s lawhounds probably just thought the risk of such a suit was greater than any benefit to be gained from keeping one cartoon horse’s original name, and told DHX to change it.
Yeah that’s what i am thinking but Coco Pommel to the coco chanel sound similar probably hasbro just wanted to play safe.
@TexasUberAlles
So anyone with the name “Coco” is a reference to the Coco Chanel? That’s rather questionable logic.
Trademark, not copyright. It’s the name of a company, and one with a history of shady legal action in regards to its brand.
This isn’t really about intellectual property this is about hasbro don’t wanted to associated Coco Pommel to the coco chanel because “The Coco Chanel is known for bedding nazi psycopaths and selling out jews to be slaughtered”, just like Intel Sandy Bridge change it name from “Gesher” to “Sandy Bridge”, so people aren’t associated it with Gesher National Social Movement in israel.
So if you use my name im going to sue your ass
Here we go again back from the beginning.
@CyanLightning
@The Smiling Pony
@CyanLightning
And probably hasbro just play save here, Probably hasbro don’t wanted to associated Coco Pommel to the coco chanel because “The Coco Chanel is known for bedding nazi psycopaths and selling out jews to be slaughtered”, just like Intel Sandy Bridge change it name from “Gesher” to “Sandy Bridge”, so people aren’t associated it with Gesher National Social Movement in israel.
this isn’t really about trademark
It is 100% about trademark, that’s the only issue at play here.
They’re both fictional characters based on Coco Chanel who share her first name, so that risk is identical. Only difference is that the pony Coco sneezes at others and the RWBY one shoots at them with a minigun.
I’m kind of surprised that the former was considered a greater risk to their brand’s image. It’s probably because MLP is more well-known.