Trademark Registration: 100% THAT BITCH
by Dennis Cxrouch
In re Lizzo LLC (TTAB 2023)
In a brand new precedential opinion, the TTAB has sided with the musical artist Lizzo — agreeing to register her mark “100% THAT BITCH” to be used on attire. The Trademark Analyzing Lawyer had refused registration on “failure-to-function” — concluding that the phrase was a commonplace expression used to specific a well-recognized sentiment.
The phrase comes from Lizzo’s 2017 music Reality Hurts (remade in 2019) that has turn into a viral sleeper hit. The unique line within the music is “I simply took a DNA check, seems I’m 100% that bitch.” However Lizzo herself didn’t create the phrase. Somewhat, Lizzo apparently noticed a social media meme about being 100% that bitch after which added it to her music. The inspecting lawyer concluded that “proof that buyers could affiliate the phrase with the well-known singer/music as a result of it was a lyric within the singer’s music doesn’t entitle the applicant as a singer-songwriter to applicable for itself unique use of the phrase.”
On enchantment, the TTAB reversed the refusal. In contrast to patents and copyrights, trademark regulation will not be designed to reward the inventive endeavor of invention or authorship. Somewhat, trademark is designed as a consume-protection and market-function software and so focuses on shopper notion. Right here, the proof means that the mark is being utilized in a decorative trend (slightly than as merely phrases) and that unusual customers affiliate the mark with Lizzo. Regardless that she didn’t create the phrases – she is the one who made them fashionable and reworked the “lesser identified phrase to extra memorable standing.” On these grounds, the TTAB concluded that the mark is registrable and thus reversed the denial.
A number of years in the past the mark would have additionally been rejected as scandalous, however that problem has been off the desk because the Supreme Court docket’s FUCT choice.
Learn the TTAB Choice right here: Lizzo TTAB Choice
