There Can Be Only One New Finland?

from the uusi-suomi dept

Mon, Dec 6th 2010 8:30pm — Mike Masnick

Reader Mimu Bunnylin points us to an interesting "trademark" battle coming out of Finland, where the Green political party kicked off their latest political campaign with a new slogan: "New Finland" (apparently Uusi Suomi in Finnish). Seems pretty generic, right? Well, apparently for a long time there was a newspaper in Finland that went by that name, and while it went out of business in 1991, in 2007 it was revived as an online only publication. While the editor of that publication didn't see anything wrong with the Green Party slogan, the publisher apparently went ballistic (Google translation from the original Finnish). He called (a different) Finnish newspaper from his vacation to complain about what the Green Party had done:

"This is intolerable, damn it! It is shocking that the Greens think they can demean the name of New Finland without contacting me!"

According to Bunnylin, the publisher also said:

"If due reparations are not agreed on, Green voters can vote for the Pirate Party, who think no one should pay for using other people's rights."

Of course, it seems that's what it really comes down to: "due reparations." Perhaps the publisher saw an opportunity to try to get some cash out of this. However, it does raise questions about whether or not such a generic and descriptive phrase like "New Finland" can really be trademarked in the first place.

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Filed Under: finland, green party, new finland, trademark

9 Comments

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Chuck (profile), 6 Dec 2010 @ 9:44pm

Swipe?
Unless I'm really mistaken, the publisher misstates Pirate Party's platform in trying to cause his argument. Do I sense a libel case? I mean, he's talking about infringing on rights, which I don't consider being paid for everything you come up with one.
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Darryl, 6 Dec 2010 @ 10:23pm

this is news because ?
slow news day ??
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Darryl, 6 Dec 2010 @ 10:25pm

???
There Can Be Only One New Finland?

Is that a question or a statement ?,
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samworm (profile), 6 Dec 2010 @ 11:26pm

Sit back and sing along
Lovely Finland. Quite a long way from Cairo...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGWqtwhS2KY
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Tor (profile), 6 Dec 2010 @ 11:39pm

Re: Swipe?
As far as I can see the Finnish Pirate Party does not have trademark reform on its agenda, so pretending that they do indeed seems to be a misrepresentation of their politics. I seriously doubt that the statement in this case is libelous however. Normally there is an extra wide margin of tolerance in the context of political speech.
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 7 Dec 2010 @ 5:14am

Re: ???
The trollingest, contradictory, illogical commenter can only be Darryl ?,

Imagine that you are not a robot and put some inflection into the sentence. Then it may make sense.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2010 @ 8:22am

Re: ???
Yes. There can only be one, like in that foreign movie where there could only be one, and in the end there is only one dude left because that was the point.
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Hell Synkee, 16 Dec 2010 @ 1:56pm

Finnish it now
No Uusi Suomi?
How about So Sumi?
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Nate Dunham, 6 Jun 2012 @ 6:38am

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