The Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov filed a new application for Bulgarian combined trademark consists of the words “Grigor Dimitrov Grisho” – in Cyrillic and his image. The mark was applied for various classes of goods and services.
Apart from the aforementioned mark, the tennis player is the owner of another two Bulgarian trademarks and one European one too. In addition to that, his name was been registered as a domain name for different areas such as .bg, .com., eu.
This approach is not a surprise, bearing in mind his 5th position in the ATP Rankings, and his celebrity status. This is a good example for and coincide with the widespread strategy used by many sportsmen and celebrities around the world who registered their names, images etc. as intellectual property objects in order to use them afterwards in a different advertisement, merchandising and endorsement campaigns.
Having said that, however, there is a significant difference how these celebrity’s characteristics are protected in Europe and the US. While in the first case, celebrities rely mainly on the classic intellectual property legislation for trademarks, designs, copyright etc., in the second case, there is a specialized law, so-called “Personality rights”, that facilitates famous people in their attempt to use commercially their reputation, names and so on.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PLANET 