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farscapenews.com reports the USPTO has sent a non-final action to the Jim Henson Company, Inc., in response to its filing a trademark on the word Scaper, an epithet for a Farscape fan, like Trekkie or Trekker, albeit one I hadn't heard yet. This is all well and good so far, since the action is non-final: no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made.

Especially egregious is their application for the tm with respect to fan club services and operating a fan site over the internet. If the Jim Henson Company, Inc., does in fact get such a tm, fan sites couldn't use the word Scaper. That in spite of the Open Directory Project (and that.. other directory) correctly listing Farscape sites--including Scapers Sanctuary at scaper.com and Farscape News, Scaper Views at scaperdot.org--in response to searches for the term.

Blue Lady Productions, who run ScaperCon, have apparently already received word from the Jim Henson Company, Inc., about use of the word. This sounds fishy, since there was (according to bluelady.org) a ScaperCon last year (5 and 6 August 2000), both the Farscape News write-up and bluelady.org say the word was coined by fans, and the Jim Henson Company, Inc., didn't even apply for the tm until this year. (Also notable is that the pages for ScaperCon 2001 haven't been updated since the end of May, even though the event was in July and over with already. The only current thing I saw was one bulletin board post. Is that par?) So it sounds like the Jim Henson Company, Inc., may be thinking with its lawyers on this.

August 6, 2001 9:26 PM 2 comments