Disney tries to trademark Day of the Dead

[Panacea]

as in the Spanish phrase for the Mexican holiday: Dia de los Muertos. http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/10/us/dis...html?hpt=hp_t3

Apparently, they want to trademark the phrase for marketing purposes because of an upcoming film that will have Dia de los Muertos in the title in some way. They don't want competition from cheap knockoffs.

Problem is, this is a major Mexican holiday that is gaining ground in the US, and a lot of people are hopping mad over it.

Given how they continually extend trademarks and copyrights so they can continue selling overpriced merchandise in perpetuity, I'm not sympathetic to them.

I liked this editorial cartoon on the flap: Muerto Mouse

[Ginger Tea]

Muerto Mouse is already a DJ and or music producer

He talks of boycotting Disney, but now that Disney or Buena Vista their parent (Unless this changed) owns quite a lot of brands and franchise now.
Lucas film and Marvel being the more recent additions.

I'm not sure if the franchise Halloween is trademarked in the same way, but no one pays royalties to the film makers every time themed candy or costumes are sold.
If they are told to NOT get on the cases of actually Dia de los Muertos events and 'merchandise' which afaik is not really sold as a global mail order concern, although some masks and wooden skulls are sold.

[Aethian]

Well they are going to have to go back in time to copyright the celebration right. I remember growing up with cartoons and kids movies to explain the celebration in a way we can understand. Disney is getting too big for its place and their current board of directors needs to learn that before they eventually crash and burn.

[Seifer]

Sorry Disney, but you can't trademark a holiday. That would be like Target trying to trademark "Christmas" so only they could print ads for Christmas sales. They'd be laughed out of the courthouse.

[Akasa]

They have already backed down due to the outrage sparked and announced they would change the title of the flick.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/disn...trademark-bid/

[Nekojin]

A couple of points: Disney could possibly Trademark Dia de los Muertos, since Trademarks are, by definition, narrow in scope - such a trademark would only apply to their field (movies). It also wouldn't do anything about anyone mentioning the holiday, to the same degree that Nike can't prevent people from talking about the Greek goddess Nike.

Also:

Given how they continually extend trademarks and copyrights...

I'm not a big fan of Disney's abusive lobbying for extensions of copyrights, but trademarks by their nature are indefinite - as long as you keep using it, you keep control of it. If you stop using it, you lose control of it. I know of someone who owned a major convention; when he shut down the convention, he refused to sell the name of the convention to another group who wanted to carry on in the same vein. His intent was to prevent anyone from ever using that name again. It's now fallen out of Trademark protection, because he wasn't using it and therefore couldn't renew it. Now, there's some discussion in the fan base to use the old convention name as a term for ALL such conventions for the fandom.

- - - - -

Long and short: Their trademark application wasn't as big of a deal as other people are making over it. It's a tempest in a teacup, and while it's a little eye-roll-worthy, it's not as though they could prevent people from celebrating the actual Dia de los Muertos.