Cashing in on Catch Phrases

The Internet and social media feed our seemingly insatiable appetite for round-the-clock celebrity news and gossip.  In the process, they have radically transformed the playing field for celebrities, and wannabe celebrities, by making them more readily accessible to the public and more famous than ever before.  The savvy celebrity, recognizing that fame can be so fleeting, is keen to take advantage of a sudden spike in interest before the flame sparks out and the crowds have moved on to the next big thing.

It is no surprise, then, that actor Charlie Sheen, who has been much in the news lately, has apparently been busy filing trademark applications through what is believed to be a related company, Hyro-gliff.  Sheen has received much notoriety for statements he has made in recent interviews, which statements have caught on with the public at large and entered into the lexicon of pop culture.  In particular, Hyro-gliff has filed the following twenty-six intent-to-use based trademark applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a variety of goods and services:

Sheen is not the first, and will certainly not be the last, celebrity to apply for trademark protection in the United States for terms and phrases that they have made popular.  Other celebrities who have registered trademarks for phrases they popularized include football star Terrell Owens (I LOVE ME SOME ME for clothing) and socialite Paris Hilton (THAT’S HOT! for men’s and women’s clothing).  Celebrities use and/or license their marks for, among other things, merchandising, so as to capitalize on their economic value. 

The catchiness of a unique term or phrase is a double-edged sword for a celebrity, as the very thing that makes it such a success – widespread recognition and use by the public – also poses the greatest risk to its undoing as a propriety trademark.  So how does a celebrity maintain that fine line between protecting a term or phrase they coined and widespread use by the public of that same term?