The news came down today: Dogecoin becomes a real trademark. This registration follows numerous fraudulent attempts, according to the Dogecoin Foundation.
Indeed, the foundation explained on its official Twitter account that in recent months, many people have fraudulently tried to register the trademark “Doge” and “Dogecoin” in their name. The same goes for the logos created for Dogecoin by Christine Ricks. Applications for this are, according to them, increasing significantly since the year 2021.
For example, a former senior developer at Dogecoin explained that ill-intentioned people have filed a lawsuit against the real developers of Dogecoin in order to get the judge to recognize their ownership.
The goal is obviously to recover and own the intellectual property rights of Dogecoin.
Given these attempts at fraud, Dogecoin’s founders had to fight back and the only way to remedy this was to trademark the name themselves.
The Dogecoin trademark, Doge as well as the logos made by Christine Ricks were thus registered on January 13, 2022 with the European Intellectual Property Unit, as you can see in the photograph of the registration certificate posted on the foundation’s official Twitter account this Tuesday, March 2.
Given an increasing number of bad faith attempts to register trademarks for “Doge”, “Dogecoin” and even the logos created for Dogecoin by Christine Ricks by people and organisations, we had no option but to register them to protect all good shibes in the @Dogecoin community. 2/2
— Dogecoin Foundation (@DogecoinFdn) March 2, 2022
In this way, Dogecoin protects itself from any possible attempts to fraudulently file the trademark. The foundation welcomed the move, calling it a “small victory.”
Now that the trademark is registered, anyone trying to imitate, replicate or use it would be at risk.
What are the risks in case of counterfeiting?
From a purely French point of view, the imitation, reproduction or use of a registered trademark is legally qualified as counterfeiting. The law treats counterfeiting as an offence, which allows the judge to impose a criminal penalty of up to 300,000 € and three years imprisonment.
The only way to avoid criminal penalties is to hold a title that complies with copyright regulations, something that will no longer be possible for the Doge and Dogecoin brand hijackers as the founders have taken the lead.
This announcement will discourage many.
However, this story shows us that even cryptocurrency founders are not immune to attempts at fraud and spoofing, which suggests that others will have to trademark their names if they want to protect themselves in the future.
Source :
- Official Twitter account of the foundation DogeCoin : twitter.com/Dogecoin
