God knows how much his vanity trademark case cost in hourly bills, expenses and phone calls, but the defeat for Lewis Hamilton vs Swatch Group, owners of the Hamilton brand, is a sweet victory for common sense. The famous woke F1 driver thought he would try to contest the registration of the Hamilton trademark by the watch company. Some media have reported that Lewis wanted to start selling his own brand accessories and watches, so that’s why there was an argument over the use of the name.
But you cannot trademark your surname, even if you are wealthy, and his lawyers should have explained this fact to him. For example Elvis Presley is a registered trademark, but a test case over twenty years ago by Elvisly Yours established that you cannot stop anyone using a name. Images from movies, clips from songs, photos etc yes, because someone created all that content, but a person’s actual name is not copyright – nobody can make a name, especially a very humble, very working class and common surname, off limits to everyone else for commercial purposes.
Perhaps the lawyers acting for Hamilton the Woke just thought of their fees, which must have been huge over the length of this three year battle. Yes, THREE YEARS. As regards damages Lewis only had to pay 890 quid in costs to Hamilton International. So as ever, the real winners were the law firms.
Hamilton has been making watches since 1892, and its most famous examples include the railroad spec pocket watches, the Intramatic, Ventura triangular model and in the modern era the Jazzmaster, Aviation and Khaki.
Anyway next stop, Hamilton The Musical. That surely must annoy the hell out of Lewis? Then there’s that TV show called Lewis – are they are having a laugh? We expect to see the following update on Instagram;
`Mugged off I tell ya, me n Roscoe totally in the speedboat now heading for the lawyers yacht. Yeah.’