The topic of trademarks has come up recently, which reminded me of something I ran across a while back when I was car-shopping: The Story of Nissan.

Uzi Nissan, that is. Uzi Nissan is an Israeli-turn-American that had the gall to use his last name for his various business ventures. Noteworthy here is that he was using the name Nissan when the car company now known as Nissan was known as Datsun in the US. That did not matter, however, as Nissan Motors took him to court anyway seeking ten million dollars in damages. Uzi Nissan ultimately prevailed, but had only a small portion of his substantial legal fees recouped.

Through Mr. Nissan’s website I read about another case of aggressive trademark protection. Apparently, a company called Entrepreneur Media (publishers of Entrepreneur Magazine) declared the word “entrepreneur” their trademark. A PR firm that took the name EntrepreneurPR was taken to court and ultimately lost a 1.4 million dollar judgment. The lawsuits are ongoing. There is a website dedicated to taking the word back from Entrepreneur Media.

Lastly, and perhaps most outrageously, Monster Cables owns the word Monster. They’ve gone after Monster.com (which, perhaps as part of a settlement, has a link to Monster Cables on their main page), the Chicago Bears (for calling themselves “The Monsters of Midway”), Fenway Park (for having “Monster seats”), Disney (“Monsters, Inc.”), and various others. I can’t remember where I first heard about this one from.