Filed Under "S" For: Stuff I Did Not Know...

...or "Super Hero".

I was only made aware that Marvel and DC Comics  both held a joint Trademark on the term "Super Hero" or "Super Heroes" very, very recently when I read about an effort (apparently not the first) to get the Patent and Trademark people to rescind the trademark as too generic a term.  A company wanted to market "Superbabies" (I have NO idea and nor do I care) as a "team of superheroes" and ran into the trademark issue.

Well, now you no longer have to worry about it.  They won.

Apparently the Marvel and DC people failed to respond to the petition and the Trademark has been revoked.

I'm usually on board with most things that comic book companies want to do to protect their interests, but this one seemed pretty low class to me.  It's a very generic term, thrown around for all kinds of reasons by all kinds of people.  Marketing a character or characters as "super hero" in NO way could ever diminish Marvel and DC's brand.  Perhaps they finally saw just how crappy it was to hold onto it and simply decided to do the right thing.  We'll likely never know.

If the legalese interests you, there's an article for you here.