Bob Thompson wrote in message ...
A feature article in the Durango Herald newspaper (Durango, Colorado) =
this morning about a 5 star resort north of town, Tall Timber, really =
caught my attention. They now offer an "extreme sport" of Peter Pan- =
like zipping down through the trees hanging from a wire that they call =
"SOARING"... and they have their lawyers "busily filing for patents and =
the COPYRIGHT TO THE NAME, SOARING". If they get this copyright of the =
name of our sport of "soaring", the name of the SSA, the name of the =
ASA, the name of Turf Soaring, Arizona Soaring, Soaring magazine, etc. =
may well have to be liscensed from these folks. =20

I'd say this is something perhaps a batch of "soaring" lawyers would =
want to look into pronto. Any copyright or patent lawyers involved in =
soaring got any comments? After all, we DO live in a VERY litigeous =
society / country.


A single word such as 'soaring' is too short to be protected by
copyright. The editors of that newspaper certainly SHOULD have
been aware of that.

They may be able to register "SOARING" (all caps) as a trademark
for their 'sport' but that won't give them rights to soaring any
more than hormel's trademark 'SPAM' carries over to email spam.

--

FF