back to article Julian Assange™ applies to trademark himself

Cross-dressing, occasionally smelly man-child webmaster Julian Assange - catapulted to global fame after publishing colossal amounts of classified-yet-humdrum US government data - has applied for a UK trademark on his own name. The filing, submitted two weeks ago by Assange's London lawyers, can be viewed at the UK …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    And so...

    ... another line is added to the Register book of house style.

    1. ant 2
      Stop

      please stop

      the facetious use of the trademark! It's entirely au point but ****king annoying.

      A

    2. David Dingwall

      Classic (TM)

      What a nice end to a loooong day, El reg has a Classic(TM) moment, with your Assange(TM) commentary.

      level 3 giggles, and I'm buying the next round (complaint: what happened to the pint of beer logo?)

      1. Code Monkey
        Pint

        Pint?

        Here it is. No, no, my shout.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Might as well let us write the articles

    We all know you guys don't really like Assange, and there's even a few good reasons for this, but when you start off an article with "Mr Assange STINKS and he dresses up like a GIRL and I HATE him" it doesn't really make your point of view very convincing. Although I guess the author knew this and so chose not to sign his/her article.

    Unless this is one big gambit to cunningly make him look BETTER by fooling us into thinking his opposition consists of mouthbreathers, if that's it then carry on!

    1. Naughtyhorse
      Big Brother

      not so sure

      it's a hard case, I fully support what he's done (the leaks.. errr the wikileaks), and would almost cetainly support him even if his principal target wasnt the 'united satan of merkins', but you must admit he is a monumentaly special kind of 24ct dipshit.

      just 1 fact... 34 squillion schools - so he was the new kid in class for his entire education, no wonder he's bent all out of shape.

      glad he/someone/anyone is doing what he's doing

      praying to god i never get trapped in a lift with the loon

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Maybe he's hoping...

    ... that he can somehow avoid the legal process if he can claim "Trademark Infringement" each time his name is used on any documentation!

  4. Neil McGovern
    Troll

    Team Register?

    Given the unnecessary bile that this article has, I'd say it's a new pseudonym of Orlowski

    1. Jeremy 2
      Paris Hilton

      No way...

      ...the comments are switched on

  5. GeorgeTuk

    Seems sensible to me...

    ...stop anyone publishing stuff without your knowledge, like humdrum books with trumped up stuff in them claiming to be biographies.

    Pop stars must get seriously sick of these.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmm...

      I doubt that'd work - There are plenty of exposes that haven't been stopped because of trademark infringement. MacDonalds, Burger King, Coke, Tesco, WalMart, etc, etc, have all been on the receiving end of recent docos.

  6. Thomas 4

    Seconding the first use of the verb "to assange"

    If the US really are hellbent on destroying the guy, all they need to do is sit back and watch as the guy assanges himself so hard he's chewing his own tonsils every time he gives a public address.

  7. Piri Piri Chicken
    Black Helicopters

    Monkeys butt

    Ass, and Sange. Sounds about right to me.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clues in the name

    Ass - meaning "backside", "donkey", a "fool"

    + ange - from "angina", pain due to lack of oxygen to the heart muscle

    as in "everytime some people see that ass Julian from wikileaks on the TV it gives them chest pains and they have to turn over to the other channel"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'll see your bonfire and raise you a pissing.

      "Ass hanging" would be closer.

      Perhaps you were thinking of -algia.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      What you're talking about is angina pectoris.

      Angina actually means just "pain", so the name literally means "pain in the ass".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        No.

        No. Just no.

        Angina means "throttling" or "strangling", and by extension "hanging".

  9. Richard 120

    What a pleb

    I mean seriously trademarking your own name?

    Love the comparison though.

  10. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Give man a rope

    and he will hang himself.

    Unless he is preparing grounds for claiming diminished responsibility due to acute mental disorder, these games will eventually turn even his most ardent supporters against him.

    1. Tom 13

      Hell, give him the hemp and

      he'll weave his own rope.

    2. Scorchio!!

      Re: Give man a rope

      "Unless he is preparing grounds for claiming diminished responsibility due to acute mental disorder, these games will eventually turn even his most ardent supporters against him."

      Maybe. I've already noted somewhere that he hired an anti semite, as evidenced by this and a number of other articles:

      http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/14/the-assange-employees

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yl1ng/Panorama_WikiLeaks_The_Secret_Story/

      Shortened version of the above:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SGtDecD85c

      Now this:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/assange_claims_international_conspiracy_against_wikileaks/

      Describing his very often erratic behaviour as tawdry is an understatement. Perhaps it comes partly from being such an undersocialised child, moving house more than 40 times, and so on. I've frequently pointed out that his upbringing, involving very little formal schooling and encouraging the sort of disrespect for rules which encourage co-operative behaviour amongst members of a group, probably encourages the sort of rule breaking behaviour across international boundaries. Additionally, his quasi philosophical scribbles and public utterances ("So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/04/AR2011020405201_2.html ) appear to show a degree of insightlessness and callousness that should cause people to question him even more than they would an elected leader, this self appointed guardian, someone who apparently doesn't care about informants unless they inform for him.

      More recently came the nonsense about his exorbitant salary, the pay wall, the autobiog, the time when he spoke of the material as if he 'owned' (never mind the original 'owners').

      Now this brief interlude of anti semitism. Not very pretty, and the wheels have barely begun to wobble, never mind fall off the bus.

      It's all been a big con, highlighted not least by the contrast between his view of people who inform on the Taliban and those who inform for him, and his failure to address the lack of accountability that his self appointed status - which ironically is practically that of a tyrant - though his former handle, Mendax, is a reference to something that ought to make intelligent people question him; it is a reference to lying.

      The glibness of his speech, the lack of accountability, his self appointed status, these and much more cry out for justice. If the Swedish CJS are able to recall him, and if their system finds him guilty and sentences him, then it is just possible that, by the time he is released from such hypothetical custody, the US will have put their case against him together. Meanwhile, all governments and their executives have now to find ways to tighten up security.

      Slowly people have become more and more enfranchised and masters of their own fate, but they seem in western counties concurrently to have lost their cultural and national identities and patriotism. The things which used to bind and protect them against malign outside influences seem to have dwindled to almost zero. Meanwhile, the appearance of decentralised communications systems, with built in redundancy turn Marx on his head, it being that the central thesis of his doctrine was that the centralisation of the means of production and distribution, and thus communications, would he thought trigger communications between workers and thus ultimately revolution. Assange relies on the ability of decentralised communications and techniques in encryption to protect that which he does and, for those who believe in revolutions, remember that they are seldom other than bloody. Robespierre, Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky are warnings from the past, as are current events.

      Democracy may be imperfect, but it at very least gives all voters the chance to prevent and control excesses. Self appointed individuals whose moral beliefs include callousness toward the likely deaths of those who inform on the Taliban, whilst protecting his own are far from trustworthy. They are dangerous and by definition insightless.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stop with the Assange "news" spam already!

    This guy is about as newsworthy, or even relevant to the original point of his organisation's raison-d'etre, as a Sarah Palin or Jacqui Smith utterance! Please The Register stop using up your valuable front page pixels and readers' eyeball mucus with this garbage ....

    At the very least, if you're going to keep posting this pointlessness, have the courage to stand by your flame fest articles and post with your actual author name instead of "Team Register" so we can see which journalist considers this news!

    1. Scorchio!!
      Stop

      Re: Stop with the Assange "news" spam already!

      Don't like it? Don't read it. Go somewhere else to conduct your whine fest.

      As to the news worthiness of the material, it highlights the greed, selfishness and duplicity of the man.

      HTH.

    2. Code Monkey
      FAIL

      Oh the irony

      How very dare you publish an article as "Team Register"!

      yous,

      AC

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    LOL ArseHand

    Bout time you guys took the mickey of this arse.

  13. The Indomitable Gall

    Ee gads.

    Does he have a company registration with Companies House too?!?

  14. Neil Milner-Harris
    Coffee/keyboard

    I hereby second that

    To assange even sounds right, someone start a facebook petition to get it included in the next revision of the Oxford English Dictionary.

  15. Blake St. Claire

    ™ or ®

    If he's actually registered then it's ®.

    Anyone can claim a common law trademark and use ™.

    Or so I've been told.

    1. Sooner Boomer

      so then it would br...

      Assange®, or in plaintext, Assanger. ass anger. Appropriate.

  16. FuzzyTheBear
    Pint

    What next ?

    He forgot the clown business.That would rake the dough in.

    Since he's apparently good at it,why not ?

    Time for a few brews.

    1. Scorchio!!
      Thumb Up

      Re: What next ?

      "He forgot the clown business.That would rake the dough in."

      <The Devil's Rejects>Hi. I'm gonna have to be taking your car today, you see I have some top secret clown business that supersedes any plans that you might have for this here vehicle!</The Devil's Rejects>

      It certainly would!

      (I've taken to compressing my faux html.)

  17. Ian Michael Gumby
    Thumb Up

    Cheekey

    "here is always some chance that it might be disallowed on the grounds that with this application the word "assange" has become a verb: To assange, to disappear suddenly up one's own arse or ass eg "Before the Swedish police could apply their handcuffs, Julian assanged with a loud plopping sound, reappearing moments later in London."

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Trademark denied.

    'To assange, to disappear suddenly up one's own arse or ass...'

    There's just far too much prior art for them to grant the trademark™.

  19. Scorchio!!
    Go

    No...

    ...I'm Spartacus!

    Let's see; autobiog; some £70-80,000 salary; pay wall; trademarking himself in a country not of his domicile (cheeky bugger!); his claim that the leaks are his personal property; any other signs of greed on the part of this convict that people can point to?

    <Robocop I>

    and remember, he cares.

    </Robocopy I>

    Bloody idiot.

  20. Graham Marsden
    Dead Vulture

    Once again...

    ... Certain members of "Team Register" need to look up the meaning of the fallacy "Poisoning the Well"

    http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning-the-well.html

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    free marketing advice

    Jools old son, you're going to need a strapline to go with that. It needs to be punchy and "now", this is 2011 after all.

    How about:

    Julian Assange(tm)

    Asswipe!

    Bring on the down-votes but think on, wobbly-chinned fanboys: just a vain, self-serving media whore and lo, here's the proof.

  22. Stewart Atkins

    Next month?

    Next month is not May, 'tis March

  23. goldcd
    WTF?

    OK.

    As a wikileaks donator, I am now officially putting him on my wanker-list.

  24. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Joke

    There go my plans...

    I was going to create a Julian Assange sandwich.

    Big thick hunk of American cheese pressing down.

    The middle ingredient would change as the wind blows.

    Swedish meatballs underneath.

    All of the above between two slices of Aussie Damper Bread. Yum...

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    The author isn't a total retard.

    He/She (AO?) had the tiny amount of sense to write this heap of hate filles crap anonymously.

  26. mafoo
    Joke

    pfft

    He's just copying sarah pain

  27. Mr Young
    Black Helicopters

    Hehe - trademark?

    Does this mean the Chinese will be making little Julian toys with shifty eyes and maybe a bionic arm or whatever?

  28. Robert E A Harvey
    Unhappy

    Yawn

    I'm bored with him now. Can we drivelmindlessly about someone else?

    1. Tom 13

      Nope. You wanted to prattle on about him when you thought he was a hero.

      We get to prattle on about him now that he's plainly revealing him to be the wanker we said he was when you wanted to canonize him.

  29. George Nacht

    The meaning of "to assange"

    ...seems very similar to "to pull a Houdini". But who these days know, who Houdini was...

    Sigh...

  30. Is it me?

    Can't we just

    transport him to Australia as an undesirable alien.

  31. markr555

    What a cock!

    The man is obviously a little ill - won't somebody please call his mother!?!?

  32. avocado
    Thumb Down

    Lost a regular reader

    I have been reading el Reg for years.

    I will no longer read it - if I wanted this kind of mindless character assasination I'd buy the Sun.

    Unsubscribe.

    Delete Feed.

  33. Bernard M. Orwell
    Joke

    The Register(tm)

    The Register(tm), an online tabloid produced using Windows(tm).

    Register: Compound Noun - "Re", a prefix denoting a secondary iteration of an already performed action. "Gist(er)": Speech, writing or other information. Gister being the individual to provide such. QED the "Register": To repeat information, writing or other information gained from an unspecified source. See also Regurgitate.

    Oh, and they smell and they dress like girls.

  34. JamieL
    Stop

    But he didn't dream it up...

    Surely his parents have first shout on copyrighting/trademarking or whatever his name.

    They thought of it!

  35. Gaz 2
    Badgers

    *sigh*

    I support the idea behind wikileaks but I really do wish Assange wasn't such a dick. At this rate I doubt the US has to do anything but watch while he dissappears up his own ass...

  36. Syntax Error
    Thumb Up

    Interesting Move

    Can you extradite a trademark?

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I used to think

    This guy was doing good - but tbh its time he left Wiki-leaks - the credibility of it / him is fast approaching zero.

    Lets just kick him on the next singapore airlines flight back to whence he came.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe there IS a reason for this?

    The recent movie about the Facebook guy did not treat him in a "reasonable" light, and if he had trademarked HIS name there might not have been a movie at all. This might be the desired result, who knows???

    WikiLeaks, the movie??

  39. g e

    It's too similar

    To the trademark Ass-Angel (tm)

  40. YumDogfood

    Cunning plan

    "This is the warrant for your arrest Mr. Assange."

    "What? Did you get permission to use my name? No? Remove my name from that document immediately! I'm gonna sue you!"

    2. Profit!

  41. Glenn Charles
    Troll

    Assange (TM)

    I had a really good assange today. After all that constipation it felt good.

  42. JimC

    Seeing the new post today made me think...

    "just because they are out to get you it doesn't mean you're not paranoid"

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a moron this guy is

    This guy thinks pretty highly of himself.

  44. Mr Larrington
    Coat

    Assange™

    est dans l'abre.

  45. Big Al
    Thumb Down

    Beaten to the punch

    Private Eye's last issue picked up on the lookalike...

  46. avocado

    On opportunism.

    On Wednesday 2nd March 2011, @wikileaks said:

    On opportunism.

    Recently, some press outlets spun a story about Julian Assange trademarking "Julian Assange", "WikiLeaks" and associated logos. These are defensive applications following the discovery of fraudulent trademark applications in Berlin, made last November and December. The most basic journalistic research (performing a trade mark search) makes these fraudulent applications obvious.

    http://tmview.europa.eu/tmview/basicSearch.html

    Whether the motivations of the fraudulent applications are to shutdown or harass WikiLeaks or to wrongfully profit from its good name are unknown, but the applications try to gain exclusive rights on almost every area of the economy, from clothing to the internet.

    If such a trademark is acquired, it can then be used to assist in shutting down WikiLeaks domain names and other functions. The same issue exists for "Julian Assange".

    -Julian Assange

    END

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