A step in the right direction for self-published authors- #cocky trademark cancelled.
It looks like the battle for “cocky” is finally over!
If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, self-published author Faleena Hopkins filed for trademarks of the word “cocky” in both a standard and stylized font, as well as the phrase”Cocker Brothers” in September of 2017. It continues to be reported that she actually trademarked “Cocker Brothers of Atlanta” but that is not the case as no such trademark exists… We’ll get to that a bit later. Upon receiving approval of her trademark applications in April of 2017, Faleena went on to change the title of her series from “Cocker Brothers of Atlanta” to the “Cocky Series”, and proceeded to send out cease and desist letters to other authors using the word “cocky” in their book title. Mind you, these letters were penned by her own hand without an attorney to back them up. She was also going in and one starring books that also used “cocky” in the title and leaving “reviews” also telling these other authors that they were violating her trademark. As you can imagine, things across the internet blew up and #cockygate ensued.
Between Faleena alleging that her readers were getting confused by other books with the word “cocky” in the title, her allegedly “drunk” hour and forty-five minute Facebook rant, mass revenge reviewing of her books, and her being driven to delete her Facebook page, and her Instagram things were obviously bad. Faleena was going on to her Twitter to “explain” her side of the story by posting screen shots from alleged readers, and speaking to obviously biased reporters about her side of the story. There are even claims that she wrote an article for the Daily Mail under the pseudonym “Jennifer Smith” that has been called biased and very evidently not fact-checked, which you can read here. There have been a few articles from New York based journalist that tend to come off in such manners. As Faleena lives in New York, it is not hard to connect the dots to these other writers being her friends. Of course, that is my opinion and I do not have any facts to back it up.
On June 29th, it was ruled that Faleena Hopkins has no right or claim to prevent people from using the word “cocky” in their book titles. The trademarks have not yet been cancelled on the USPTO website, but it looks like the battle is over.
As I pointed out in the first paragraph, Faleena still holds trademark for the phrase “Cocker Brothers.” In every article I’ve read and video I’ve watched, it continues to be misreported that she owns the trademark for “Cocker Brothers of Atlanta.” A quick search of that phrase on the USPTO website will show you that there is not a trademark filed for “Cocker Brothers of Atlanta” only “Cocker Brothers.” While the trademark is specifically for romance books, there is nothing saying that this whole thing won’t start over again if someone has “Cocker Brothers” in their book. Yes, Faleena’s brand may be “Cocker Brothers of Atlanta,” but I just hope no one intends on using “Cocker Brothers” as characters or in their books. I’ve been told I’m being nit-picky in this regard, but it’s still a big deal to me.
In any case, I’m glad that this whole mess is over and that there has been a victory for the world of self-publishing. I hope that we continue to see forward momentum in regards to this sort of thing because I feel like it further legitimizes self-published authors and proves that we’re not all silly little hobbyists, that we are actually passionate,hard working people.
