Donnie is a bit of an extra angry boy; maybe it’s after losing the copyright to the name “iTrump”. Worse than that, the copyright authorities have cancelled the exclusive copyright on “Trump” in connection with entertainment services, including reality TV shows.
The case centered on smartphone app which teaches and emulates a trumpet.
(Tom) Scharfeld, who played in jazz ensembles while in college at MIT, is the founder of San Francisco-based Spoonjack LLC, a one-person firm that developed iTrump and iBone, which teaches the trombone. A lifelong trombone player, he wanted to design an intuitive and playable simulation of the instruments for the iPhone.
Scharfeld called the apps “iTrum” and “iTrom”, applied for name copyright and started to sell them on the Apple store in December 2010.
About a month later, he was stunned to receive a letter from Trump's lawyers demanding that he immediately rename his product. They said his use of the name diluted the quality of "the famous" Trump mark and tarnished "the goodwill and reputation that Mr. Trump has built over the years" from his books and reality television show, "The Apprentice."
Scharfeld refused, and Trump and the Trump Organization challenged his mark before the trademark board. Scharfeld dug in because he said Trump's lawyers were "100 percent wrong -- the word trump has other meanings [see Oxford English Dictionary under ‘fart’]." He pushed hard to prove that his trumpet application had nothing to do with Trump and wouldn't cause confusion.
Instead of caving in under the pressure from the Trump mafia organisation’s highly paid lawyers, Scharfeld hit back:
After defeating this claim, the developer then went on the attack.
And this resulted in the company losing a key trademark of its own last week.
On 11 August, the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled the New York-headquartered company's exclusive right to use "Trump" in relation to entertainment services, including reality TV shows.
The ruling followed earlier victories by San Francisco-based Tom Scharfeld, in which he prevented the Trump Organization from owning the exclusive right to use "Trump" in connection with computer games, golf-related mobile apps and music streaming.
Even better, up against Trump’s lawyers, Scharfeld conducted his own case, having taught himself copyright law!
So it looks like even as the value of the Trump endorsement goes down, the scope of things he can slap his name on reduces. If you’d like to have a quick celebration, you can TrumpDonald — move the trumpet with your cursor and click to blow. 673 million trumps in his face already!