David and Goliath: A Politico Story

The Capitol News Company owns POLITICO, a news website about politics in Washington. Capitol has issued a “Cease-and-Desist” letter to Stephen Gutowski, owner of The College Politico.

The gist of the letter is, “We own the word ‘politico’ and if you don’t hand over your domain (website) within ten days, we’ll sue you.” You can view the letter in its entirety here.

Trademarks are an important part of intellectual property protection. What good does it do for FedEx, McDonald’s or Nike to build their unique brand and establish their name if someone else can use that name to sell something similar, or even something completely different? Protecting a unique identifier such as a brand or company name is important. That is also why choosing a name that is unique is important, since these are easier to protect and less likely to be found invalid later on.

I am not a legal scholar, but some basic common sense should be applied whenever the issue of trademark infrigement is brought up (and yes, I understand that common sense is wholly uncommon in our time, especially in a court of law). In this case, we’re talking about the common sense concept of “enforceability.”

A little background:

Capitol News registered as a trademark the words “POLITICO” and “CAMPUS POLITICO” in December, 2006 and December, 2007, respectively. You can find this information at the US Patent and Trademark Office here. These are legally registered trademarks and are valid under US law.

There’s just one problem: With very, very few exceptions, it is not possible to simply trademark a word in common usage, even if it used rarely.

Filed under: media, speech, politico, property, the college politico, trademark