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The Sign of the Rampant Hewitt: is it a patent?

By Jeremy

The IPKat's friend Craig Smith (a Senior Associate with Freehills, Australia) has written to the IPKat as follows:

"I?m not sure whether you are still maintaining the rage on misreporting of IP matters in the media, but I couldn?t resist sharing a recent news story from one of Australia?s main broadsheets. The journalist is reporting on Lleyton Hewitt applying for an Australian trade mark registration for a logo that is based on his somewhat annoying self-congratulatory antics on the tennis court (it?s number 1212274, accessible here after clicking ?enter as guest? and then putting the number into the last search field) [the IPKat tried this and couldn't gain access, but the picture, above right, lets you see what the original gesture's like]. From his long list of goods he?s even apparently intending to use it for selling lingerie!.

The journalist manages, in the one article, to describe the gesture as being protected as a trade mark, by copyright, and by a patent, in addition to Lleyton Hewitt having ?effectively copyrighted his family by selling exclusive rights to his 2005 wedding and the subsequent safe delivery of baby Mia to Woman's Day? (story here). Not a bad effort (although she failed to include any reference to registered design protection)".

The IPKat remains perpetually dismayed at the level of ignorance displayed by journalists, but something he finds almost as annoying is the superfluous "L" at the beginning of the forename "Lleyton". Can anyone explain it? Merpel asks, surely the performance of the gesture by another tennis player, or indeed anyone else, doesn't fall within the definition of an infringing act in relation to the logo itself?

He missed out: the famous gesture that Winston Churchill forgot to register as a trade mark.

STOP PRESS: the IPKat thanks all of you who have written in with copies of the logo itself. Craig actually supplied a sample with his original letter but the Kat was having a fumbly sort of day with his computer and couldn't quite find a way of copying the image to his hard disk so that he could load it up for the blog. For the record, it's reproduced here on the right.

Full post as published by IPKat on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).