BTW, for those of you who’re following #cockygate on Twitter…
dduane
There’s an excellent roundup of the issues, along with expert commentary from lawyers, here.
The tl;dr version, via @sugarsparks13:
@PhillyD have you heard about #CockyGate? #FaleenaHopkins trademarked the word “cocky” and is now threatening to sue other authors who have used the word in a book title unless they change it.
…And things then blew up. Most notably: A legal challenge to the trademark has already been filed with the US Patent Office by a romance writer who’s also a lawyer. (Apparently there are quite a few of these….) Kevin Kneupper did the filing on his own dime, is refusing to take contributions toward the amount spent, and says he’ll litigate it going forward (which may take months). As a result a lot of people are buying his latest book. I intend to go do just that, momentarily.
Meanwhile, if you need a dunking in lovely righteous outrage to enliven your Monday (or Bank Holiday Monday, on this side of the water), you could do worse than check out #cockygate.
See also the Twitter thread here: