Cockygate is over!
Recently a notice was posted at Cocky Authors, the website for those who were affected by Faleena Hopkins attempting to trademark the word cocky in a romance title, along with a specific font.
The good news is that the trademarks have been surrendered and the lawsuit has been withdrawn.
This is a HUGE win not just for the Indie romance author but also for every author. One of my fears was that this suit, if given any credibility, would lead the way for people attempting to trademark titles, phrases, words, fonts, designs – something that small time publishers and independent authors couldn’t easily do, but what large publishing houses could do.
It also could have led to ‘squatting’, much as domain squatting happened; that practice was eventually prohibited, but if it started happening to romance authors, especially authors who didn’t have the funds to fight a big house squatting on a book title, who would really have cared?
Kudos to all those involved who decided to fight this and bore the stress of it; the rest of us also got a win out of it!