ALS Association Tries To Trademark "Ice Bucket Challenge", Despite Having Nothing To Do With It Originally
from the trademark-shame dept
The whole Ice Bucket Challenge (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Ice+Bucket+Challenge&safe=off) thing has become quite the story of the month of August, and it's certainly been fascinating to watch how this viral promotion has turned into a massive money raiser for research into ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis -- sometimes called Lou Gehrig's Disease).
If you somehow haven't yet heard of this (and I find it nearly impossible to believe you haven't yet), it's when people get challenged to dump a bucket of ice over their heads and/or give money to charity (though, mostly people do both things).
While there's been some ice bucket challenge backlash (often for silly reasons), just from the standpoint of watching something go viral, it's been fascinating. Of course, whenever things get big, sooner or later lawyers are going to step in and things are going to get messy. It appears that the ALS Association -- by far the largest beneficiary of the Ice Bucket Challenge -- is now trying to trademark the term (http://www.erikpelton.com/2014/08/27/let-the-ice-bucket-trademark-challenges-begin-alsassociation-files-to-register-ice-bucket-challenge-with-uspto/).
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While the ALS Association has certainly been a massive beneficiary, it had little to nothing to do with anything related to the challenge, other than getting a bunch of checks in the month of August. To now claim a trademark over it seems... kind of disgusting.
Full story: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140827/17325528346/als-association-tries-to-trademark-ice-bucket-challenge-despite-having-nothing-to-do-with-it-originally.shtml
Interesting... never heard about this.