TikToker Jools Lebron has been on a tear after her “very demure, very mindful” video went megaviral and snagged her major brand deals. But this week, in the midst of her rise, she posted an emotional video about how she’d “dropped the ball” because when she went to explore merchandising opportunities, she realized someone else had already filed a trademark application for the catchphrase she’d invented. She should’ve done it sooner, she said, and now it was too late.
Was it actually too late, though? Do creators need to worry about trademarking catchphrases the second one of their videos goes viral?
The short answer: no.
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“I’ve just invested so much money and time into this and I feel like I did it wrong,” Lebron said in the video, which has since been deleted from her page. “I feel like I didn’t try hard enough. I wanted this to do so much for my family and provide for my transition, and I just feel like I dropped the ball.”
Don’t worry, she didn’t. The application, filed Aug. 20 by a man named Jefferson A. Bates, asks to trademark “very demure, very mindful” for the purposes of advertising, marketing, and promotional services. Bates has a history of unsuccessfully trying to trademark other people’s sayings, a behavior that seems trademark trollish. (Trademark trolls are people whose goal isn’t to actually use the phrases themselves, but to secure legal ownership and then extort the original creators for the rights to use their own sayings.)
That should be some comfort to Lebron, but even if Bates didn’t have a history of failed trademarks, she’d still have a strong case based on something called “trademark priority.” Basically, because Lebron was the first person to use that phrase, and her usage is documented on publicly available video and in numerous brand deals before Bates filed his application, she still has priority consideration to trademark it. All she has to do is file her own application, and it’ll bump Bates’s. The trademark will be hers.
That information comes from trademark lawyer Ashley Nkadi aka @bellewoods, who uploaded her own TikTok video giving her personal insight into this sort of case. She also said trademark cases usually take around a year to be registered, so Lebron isn’t too late, and has time to correct this.
“Jools is gonna be just fine,” she said.
@bellewoods #stitch with @Ashtyn love you downnnnnn @Jools Lebron #demure #verydemure #verymindful #trademark #greenscreen ♬ original sound – bellewoods
And Lebron’s case shows exactly why other creators don’t have to worry. If they invent a catchphrase that goes viral and someone decides to try trademarking it, they’ll have plenty of time to get their own trademark filed.
This situation does raise another couple concerns, though. If trademark trolls become more prevalent in the creator space, it could push creators to get ultralitigious, filing trademarks on more phrases both to combat already-filed troll applications and to ward off any future trolls. But should we be trademarking every single viral sentence that comes out of our mouths? Will it put a damper on cultural moments if other users are afraid to pick up a trendy catchphrase and make their own content with it out of fear of legal action?
These are things to consider. For now, though, creators can rest assured their catchphrases won’t be stolen from them. Just be sure to check in with the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s public filings if you have a video go viral.
