You Can't Sue For Trademark Infringement Forty-Five Years Later; Wailers Get To Keep Their Name
from the taking-your-sweet-time dept
If you're a music fan, and you hear of a band called "The Wailers," your first thought is most likely to be the band originally formed with Bob Marley, which continued to perform well after Marley's death. However, there's apparently another band called "The Wailers" that was formed in Seattle in 1959, pre-dating Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer getting together at Studio One in Kingston for Coxsone Dodd in 1963. Obviously, that was a long, long time ago, so it was a bit strange that the Seattle Wailers sued the Jamaican Wailers back in June for trademark violation. Considering the two bands had coexisted in some manner for 45 years, you would think there wouldn't be much of a problem. In fact, the Seattle Wailers only registered a trademark on the name in 2003. And, while they complained that the Jamaican Wailers owned the wailers.com domain name, that was registered before 2003. Luckily a judge has agreed, and told the Seattle Wailers that they waited way too long to file such a lawsuit, and there's no evidence that the Jamaican Wailers did anything in bad faith with their name or domain name. This is a good ruling, at least, but even the fact that the Seattle Wailers thought it was worth taking a shot at such a lawsuit shows how the concept of "intellectual property" has been changing recently. It really has reached the point, where people are associating any kind of intellectual property with having total and complete rights over things that shouldn't be limited that way. In an age where copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits are so commonplace, it's really no surprise that folks would dredge up a situation that had worked fine for 45 years and try to make a lawsuit out of it.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: bob marley, trademark, wailers
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Take a shot
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Legalize It
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Adding to Mike's Statement
"This is a good ruling, at least, but even the fact that the Seattle Wailers thought it was worth taking a shot at such a lawsuit shows how the concept of "intellectual property" has been changing recently" for the worse.
Because it really is just getting worse from every view (except the greedy lawyer's view).
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Just to play Devil's Advocate...
They may have just been giving it a shot without much hope of actually winning in the hopes of getting the URL.
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Re: Just to play Devil's Advocate...
Trademarks only apply to limited areas. Thus, if your business was limited to the west coast there would be nothing illegal under trademark law for a second company to use the same name on the east coast.
That's exactly why Hellman's mayonnaise is called Best Foods on the west coast. Some other company beat Hellman's to that geographic region with the name Hellmans.
And it's ludicrous to imply that the Jamaican Wailers "just recently started" using the name. They've been successfully using the name "Wailers" worldwide since the 60s.
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Re: Re: Just to play Devil's Advocate...
Another parallel though is that I could file for a trademark of "Intel" for my line of clothes(this specific example lost in another country(Malaysia?) but works here in the US) and Intel, the CPU company, won't have any case since we're in different trades altogether. If I so much as branched out into "clothing for the computer geek", I'd have a much harder time proving I was innocent though since I'd then be using the name with a reference to technology.
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Yippie! Now I can name my band what I want!
But now that it's been shown that you can use the name as long as the other band hasn't been around for a while, then we can go full steam ahead. We're already talking about our next album. We have two potential names: "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" and "The Dark Side of the Moon"
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Re: Yippie! Now I can name my band what I want!
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Re: People will do anything when there is money in
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Wailers
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Wailers vrs Wailers
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Wailers Trademark
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No, the Real Wailers didn't get to keep their name.
The second Wailers group used the law to have exclusive use of the name and prohibit the original inventors of the name from using it. There is an example of this in the commercial world. The original company Budweiser in Czeck Republic wanted to come into the US to sell their beer. The had the name well before the US company. The US company stopped them from selling it under the name it had and was using long before Budweiser US. In a fair world, the arrangement would have been for Budweiser of Czeck Republic to use their own graphics and not mimic US-Bud and plainly state "Budweiser of Czeck Republic" and the US Budweiser, in their colors and scripts style to say "Budweiser - USA".
Fair is fair and the first is still the first.
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The Wailers
The Jamaican band were NOT the first to use the name The Wailers. It was the band often referred to as "The Boys From Tacoma". I cannot say why they waited so many years to seek the trademark to their name. It's certain that they co-existed alongside the band Marley ended up in for decades...but that's not my point. The author seems to think the northwest Wailers were some small insignificant band tying to usurp someone else's intellectual property They were not. I know publishing and intellectual rights law, so the judgment in this case was warranted, however if the original Wailers had acted sooner they surely would have won this battle. History is history, but PLEASE do some research or have a clue before making yourself look so silly.
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Waiilers name.....
The Seattle Wailers were without any DOUBT the original WAILERS and always will be!!!! {Spanish Castle was the Place!!!}
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