The Costs of Trademarking Dolls

Professor Curtin’s article, Zombie Cinderella and the Undead Public Domain, takes a recent case from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) as the basis for an argument that trademark doctrine needs stronger protection against the exclusive commercial appropriation of characters that are in the public domain. In that case, a doll manufacturer sought to register the term “Zombie Cinderella” for a doll that was zombie-ish and princess-like. The examiner refused registration because the term “Zombie Cinderella” for this kind of doll was confusingly similar to the mark for Walt Disney’s Cinderella doll. Although the TTAB overturned the examiner’s “refusal to register” determination, it did so because it said Disney’s mark is a conceptually weak source indicator of “Disney” for dolls. This leaves open the possibility that Disney could build a stronger association between its mark and its dolls and eventually monopolize the term “Cinderella” as a mark for princess dolls. Professor Curtin’s article argues that leaving this opportunity open would be bad policy and should be precluded under a proper application of trademark law