Slim Shady vs. Swim Shady | Matt Connarton Unleashed

You know, I love talking about branding and trademarks and copyright. I'm not an attorney, I'm not a legal expert of any kind. I do know a little bit about this stuff, just because of my experience in the music industry so and with podcasts and things. So I do know some. I do know a little bit. I know enough to have an opinion. For example, earlier when we were talking about the latest update on Taylor Swift being sued by Maren Flag over the trademark of you know, Maren Flagg has this podcast Confessions of a Showgirl.

Taylor Swift has the album Life of a Showgirl, and so there is a legal battle that. Again I still can't believe it goes on, but it does. I think it's frivolous. But anyway, so I'm fascinated by all of these things. This I did not know about until today. I didn't know this one was going on. But this is interesting. This is another trademark situation. This is from Digitalmusicnews dot Com, one of my favorite websites for music industry news. Sydney beats brand beats eminem in legal battle over swim Shady trademark.

Okay, so they've been using this trademark. This company swim Shady. It says here Sidney Beach brand swim Shady has secured a trademark victory against rapper Eminem, who argued the company's name was too similar to his alter ego. Says here, Well, the real swim Shady please stand up. The Sydney Beach brand won a major victory in the trademark fight against rapper Eminem, who argued that the company's name was too similar to his established branding and longtime alter ego, slim Shady. Now the Australian Registrar of Trademarks has narrowed the scope of the musician's claim.

On Wednesday, the IP Australia Delegate IP for Intellectual Property. The IP Australia Delegate determined that his existing trademarks had not been significantly used across Australia. Evidence showed that Eminem's existing Australian trademarks for Shady and Shady Limited hadn't been genuinely used across a range of merchandise categories including clothing, bags and footwear during the relevant period. Moreover, evidence further showed that there had been only three recent sales of Shady merch to customers in Australia during that period.

The Delegate also found that there were insufficient evidence that Eminem exercise the level of control over the Australian sale of merch required to maintain trademark protection in these specific categories. That brings up an interesting question that I want to circle back to. Something about this I've always wondered, and again we're talking about this is you know, the laws in Australia are not the laws here. But there's a broad question that I've been thinking about when it comes to trademarks.

But we'll come back to that, so more to this again. This is from Digitalmusicnews dot Com. As a result, the Shady and Shady Limited trademarks will now be removed from several merch categories, thereby allowing swim Shady to continue selling under its existing brand. The main issue at hand is the timing. Eminem has long been known by his slim Shady moniker, but he did not register Slimshady as an Australian trademark in the country until after swim Shady launched its own business. Ah swim Shady founders Jeremy Scott and Elizabeth Africof said quote.

While this is an important milestone for swim Shady, it is one step in the broader trademark proceedings, and we recognize there are still matters to be resolved unquote. Indeed, the Australian ruling is just one part of the broader dispute. Eminem is also opposed swim Shady's trademark in several jurisdictions, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Meanwhile, his legal team has until July twenty second to appeal the decision in Australia. It's just the latest ruling in a series of high profile trademark disputes, including Katy Perry's battle against Sydney designer Katy Perry and Taylor Swift's fight against a real life showgirl.

That's the story of the Taylor Swift thing, is what we talked about earlier. I did not know so Katy Perry, I guess I'm gonna have to click that link because now I'm curious. We'll go down that rabbit hole. So I guess Katy Perry has been in some sort of legal battle with a designer from Sydney, Australia named Katy Perry. Uh oh, so this springs the question that I always wonder about with this stuff. Let's go back a little bit, and again I understand Australian laws different than in the United States, but let's see okay this paragraph here.

Moreover, evidence further showed that there had been only three sales of shady merch to customers in Australia during that period. The Delegate also found that there was insufficient evidence that EMINEM had exercised the level of control over the Australian sale of merch required to maintain trademark protection in the specific categories. So it raises the question. This is something I've always wondered about. What if someone trademarks something, They trademark a name, and then they just never do anything with it, so they own the trademark and then they just they just park it.

I don't know if that would be the right term. We use that term when it comes to website domains. You know, if you buy a web domain and you and you park it, you just you don't do anything with it. You just own it because you want to own it. In case somebody needs it, they're gonna have to pay you for it. What's to prevent people from doing that with trademarks? Is there anything to prevent people from doing that with trademarks? If you just think of something that's a cool name and you find out nobody has it yet, and you say, I'm going to trademark that, So if somebody wants to use that, they're gonna have to come to me for it, or I'm going to get some sort of some sort of money from that.

What's to prevent people from doing that? And I don't know. Apparently in the Australia system of doing this, there is sort of a safeguard built in against people being able to do that because if you buy a trademark, but then you're not using it. So in other words, Eminem, after the swim Shady brand launched Eminem, his legal team went ahead and filed this trademark in Australia, right retroactively in effect, right, but if they're not doing anything with it, and they're not going to do anything with it, I mean, it's almost a form of harassment in a way.

Now, the way that Eminem's legal team probably argues it is they would say, well, if it were not for slim Shady, there would be no swim Shady because obviously the point of the name swim shady, that's a play on the name slim shady, right, swomen's slim rhyme, and it's you know, it's not hard to figure out. In other words, if Eminem had never used the slim Shady alter ego and use that name, the swim Shady brand would not exist. They would have called it something else, right, So that's probably how Eminem's legal team argues it and why it's trademark infringement.

But it sounds like in Australia, if you own a trademark but then you're not using it, you're just parking it. Again, I don't know if that's the term when it comes to trademarks. You can't just claim it in perpetuity that your trademark is being infringed upon. And again I don't know if if the US Patent Office, for example, treats that the same way. I don't know if they do. I hope that they do, because I think that they should, because you shouldn't be able to just buy a trademark just to have it and then never do anything with it, and then be able to sue somebody because they're using it, especially if because I assume the swim Shady trademark was approved by Australia's what is it IP delegate, right, so now they're using it.

You don't just you know, if you're a big company like that, you're not just going to you know, like a big swimwear company or whatever. You're not just going to start using a trademark without being sure that you can legally right anyway. So I've just always that's something I've always wondered about. What's to stop people from abusing the trademark system. It's not that expensive. I know because I've done it. It's not that expensive to file for a trademark. So what's to prevent someone from just buying up lots and lots of trademarks that they think someone's going to want to use.

Or if you have knowledge almost like insider trading, although that's definitely not the right term in this I don't know what the term would be here, but if you have knowledge that somebody is going to be wanting to trademark something potentially, and you have some sort of insider knowledge about that, and you say, oh, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna run and register this trademark. Now, I do know in the US Trademark and Patent Office they don't. They don't just they don't just give out trademarks like candy.

You do have to supply some documentation. But again, what's to prevent someone from just kind of doing that frivolously and presenting that they have the intentions of using this trademark for something, but then in the end they don't use it, They're just parking it. So that's something I wonder about. Now I am I wasn't planning on doing this, but now I'm curious. I'm going to click this and see what this Katie Perry thing is all about. So apparently, oh, this happened back in April and twenty twenty three, so this is not recent news, but I do think it's relevant.

So and that's what they included the link in the article. So I'm just gonna go ahead and look at this. This is from Digital Music News dot com. Katie Perry beats Katie Perry in a David and Goliath trademark battle, saying this is a win for small business. Ah okay, all right, So singer Katy Perry has lost a trademark lawsuit by Australian fashion designer Katie Perry. Katie Perry sued the pop star for allegedly infringing the designer's trademark with her merchandise. Oh interesting, okay, So on Friday April twenty eight, and again keep in mind this is a few years ago, Justice Bridget Markovic or Markovic ruled that clothing sold during Katy Perry's twenty fourteen Australia tour breached designer and small business owner Katie Perry's trademark, Katie's company Kitty Purry, must pay damages to Katie Katie, the Australian designer, apparently, the amount of which will be determined in May.

So we won't go through the whole thing because again it's old news. It's from a few years ago. But that's an example of but again this. Oh and they do spell them differently by the way, So Katie Perry, the Australian designer spells it k A T I E. And of course, uh, Katy Perry spells it. You know, the singer calls it, spells it k A T y Okay,

Slim Shady vs. Swim Shady | Matt Connarton Unleashed

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