Lawyer Attempts To Trademark Bitcoin

An anonymous reader writes "A NY based lawyer has submitted an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office claiming first use of the term bitcoin on June 22nd, 2011. The evidence of first use in the form of a letter detailing his wife's offer to sell "bitcoin" for $17.50 on June 23rd. A pdf extolling the virtues of bitcoin has also been uploaded to his law firms webpage."

Punish Trolls

[jarich]

This beautifully illustrates why there should be some punishment for this type of behavior. He's obviously ignoring all prior art and forcing an already overloaded system to deal with this crap. Fine him.

Re:Punish Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice rant, but unfortunately your knowledge of intellectual property laws is about on par with the rest of slashdot. First, you can't trademark troll, since trademarks are only valid if in active use. Second, there's no such thing as prior art in trademark law. If Coca Cola went out of business tomorrow, and nobody bothered to buy up their trademark, it would be perfectly legal for me to start my own soda company called Coca Cola. Third, most of the fault here is Bitcoin's, as they should have registered the trademark themselves, or failing that, protected their trademark without registration.

Re:Punish Trolls

[v1]

Fine him? he's a lawyer. disbar him. He's obviously unfit to be legal council.

Publicity Stunt

[brainzach]

Instead of defending the trademark, the lawyer is promoting the virtues of Bitcoin. He is probably just trying to generate publicity to pump up the price of Bitcoins that his wife is selling. I doubt the lawyer is stupid enough to think he can be successful trademark Bitcoin.