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4 - Trademark

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

Gordon Hull
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Summary

This chapter treats developments in trademark in the context of the development of brand capitalism.Traditional trademark analysis displayed the features of a public biopolitics; developments around branding push it in a neoliberal direction.I focus on three developments.The first is trademark dilution, which protects brands as valuable in themselves. An extended analysis of Victoria’s Secret’s successful attempt to shut down a sex-toy shop that called itself “Victor’s Little Secret” shows how dilution also functions as a kind of subjectification.The second is a recent Supreme Court case ruling that, PTO rules against registration of disparaging trademarks violated the First Amendment.The result transfers power to brand owners.The third is the use of Geographic Indicators to protect “traditional” cultural indicia.This resistance strategy is a difficult one, as it risks entrenching conservative and stereotypical views of cultural groups, often at the expense of dissident forms. It thus illustrates an unexpected way that branding can function as a form of subjectification, and the potential limits of using trademarks and branding as strategies of resistance.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property
Regulating Innovation and Personhood in the Information Age
, pp. 98 - 141
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Trademark
  • Gordon Hull, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property
  • Online publication: 01 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108687232.005
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  • Trademark
  • Gordon Hull, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property
  • Online publication: 01 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108687232.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Trademark
  • Gordon Hull, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Book: The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property
  • Online publication: 01 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108687232.005
Available formats
×