Trademark only works if the infringement is in direct competition with you. They need to be in the same trade as the person/company that owns the particular mark of the trade.

A plumbing company could use Mickey as a mascot, (and even claim Mickey as their own trademark for plumbing, preventing Disney from using it for plumbing-related marketing in the future,) because Disney isn’t a plumbing company so they can’t claim a plumber is infringing on their trademark. Since the plumber is in an entirely separate trade and isn’t competing with Disney, Disney can’t claim trademark infringement.

[–] XTornado@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Meanwhile Disney's creates micro companies on all sectors to be able to claim the trademark on each one.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 9 months ago

Which works fine until you get served a cease-and-desist by Disney's lawyers, and you can't afford to fight it. Disney probably won't win if they go to trial, but it's not going to trial.

[–] Mellibird@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

And they've already transitioned to using the Steamboat Willie model for the opening of their new movies as part of their trademark. As soon as I saw that happening I knew it wouldn't matter that the copyrights to it would finally go away because Disney found a new way around it with the trademarking.