If you’re a romance author, especially one who has used the
word cocky in a title, you have probably already heard the news. For the
readers keeping up with this story, you might know too, but for those of you
who don’t know. Guess what? It’s okay to be cocky in your titles.
Not long ago, I shared with you the story of a romance
author who had trademarked the word cocky in connection with one of her series.
Apparently, she has several books featuring characters with the last name
Cocker so she decided to do something that she felt would tie all the books
together in a clever way. Her answer was to use the word cocky in every title.
For example, and I don’t know if these are names of her actual titles, but The
Cocky Teacher, The Cocky Doctor, The Cocky… you get the idea.
You know what? I think that’s a great idea. Any author with
a series has done it, myself included. When I wrote the Time for Love series,
all four books had the word time in the title. Same thing with my Taking on
Love series. Each book had the word taking in the title. Using a word in your
titles to associate it with your series is great. Unfortunately, the author in
question took it too far.
Somewhere along the way, she decided she wanted to trademark
her brand. Again, I have no issue with this. Several authors have a brand
trademarked, which keeps other authors from profiting from use of that brand.
One of my peers, the amazing Erin Nicholas, has a wildly popular romance series
set in the fictitious town of Sapphire Falls. If another author wants to write
books set in this town, we need her permission because she owns the trademark.
Trademarks work and none of us mind their use, but the author I’m talking about
didn’t just trademark her brand when she trademarked her Cocky series. Nope,
she decided that since she had a trademark on the Cocky Brothers series that
she owned the trademark to the word cocky itself.
You read that right. The author decided she owned the
trademark to the use of the word cocky in all book titles. With that
understanding, she started sending cease and desist letters to all authors who
used the word cocky in the title of any romance novel published after she
secured her trademark. In that letter, she explained to each author that she
owned the trademark of the word cocky and would take legal action against any
author who continued to use the word cocky in her title. Further, she contacted
retailers like Amazon and reported that because she owned the trademark on the
word cocky, any author using it was in violation of her trademark. This led to
Amazon and similar sites taking down other authors’ books, the ultimate result
being lost income for those authors.
As you can imagine, this created quite the uproar. Some
authors, fearing they didn’t have the money to fight a lawsuit, went ahead and
changed their titles. Others refused to back down. After all, you can’t
trademark a word. Several authors posted You Tube and or Facebook videos
pleading with the author in in question to be reasonable. Blogs were written
detailing why the author’s alleged trademark ownership of a word didn’t have a
leg to stand on. Authors began tweeting about it, calling the whole fiasco
cockygate. One author, who is also a lawyer, began an online petition to have
the trademark reversed. Readers picked up on what was going on based on our
social media posts and they weighed in, most seeming to agree that the author
leading this charge needed to back off.
Not only did she not back off, she secured herself a lawyer
and decided she was going to sue a few authors. Two authors and one online
publicist were named in her lawsuit. How did the publicist get dragged into
this? This poor woman promoted a book with a title along the lines of “Cock
Tales”. The book was an anthology with
stories by multiple authors. All stories had the word cocky in the title. The
purpose wasn’t just to poke fun but to start a legal defense fund since
everyone saw the writing on the wall. Not one author in the “Cock Tales” book
kept their profits. The author in question mistakenly thought the publicist was
the author of the book and included her in the lawsuit.
This thing got so big that the Romance Writers of America
(RWA) got involved. For those of who don’t know, The RWA was founded in 1980.
It is a non-profit trade organization whose goal, according to their website,
is to advance the interests of career-focused romance authors. When the RWA saw
what was happening, they reached out to lawyers as well, and when the trademark
author filed her lawsuit, the RWA announced it would fund council for the
defense. Their generosity left a lot of us sighing in relief since there is no
way most of us could afford to fight this in court, including the authors who
were the subject of the lawsuit.
The case was heard before in a New York court earlier this
year, and it didn’t look good for the trademark author. Preliminary findings
indicated the trademark wasn’t necessary, that readers weren’t confusing her
books with others and were sophisticated enough to know the difference. Reader
confusion was one of her reasons for insisting she needed the trademark.
Supposedly, multiple readers contacted her to state they had bought a book they
thought was hers only to realize it was another author’s book with a similar title. I don’t know about you, but if
I happen to buy the wrong book, I simply return it. I’ve never had an issue
with this, but I digress. The court also found the plaintiff hadn’t done her
due diligence in bringing the lawsuit and certain aspects were without merit.
I can only imagine that the author in question heard the
train rumbling down the tracks. Earlier this week, news broke that she not only
withdrew her lawsuit but surrendered her trademark. This is a victory, not just
for the authors named in her lawsuit, but for all authors. Forget breathing a
sigh of relief, many of us are jumping for joy over this news. You can’t
trademark a word and expect it not to be used by other authors, even those in
the same genre as you.
Guess that’s the way the cocky cookie crumbles.
