Coco Wyo’s Trademarks: Protect Your Colouring Books

[@lunablanca2460]

The curious thing about this case is that Coco Wyo copied the term Bold & Easy from Meg Publishing and used her community on social networks to popularize it. Too bad he now wants to appropriate the term.

[@tared2400]

I confirm that they copied from Meg Publishing, and they copied idea too

[@T6354-o2b]

No. Coco Wyo have NOT been the ones to make them succesful. Meg Publishing has. Coco Wyo copied them from Meg Publishing (along with the designs of Meg Publishings books) and are now trying to claim the term. It is honestly despicable.

[@DeAnnaG_KissingFrogsMedia]

Nuria! Thank you for the heads up on this. I do have a few thoughts to throw out there on this. Most of these are just adjectives, and fairly generic and common phrases. I have a coloring book from the 1980s with bold and easy coloring on the cover. I'm not sure how they can successfully trademark any of those when there are not exactly original words and or phrases. Yogi Bera, a sports caster was able to TM "three-peat" because it was an original word mashup at the time. Just as Xerox was able to TM its name because was original. Coco Wyo can definitely be TM and registered as that is a unique name/brand and Folgers was able to TM the jingle "the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup." because it contained the brand name and was an original line. So I agree with using some caution in the meantime and keeping an eye on it, I would be surprised if a TM will be granted, as TMing BOLD and Easy would have far reaching impacts beyond coloring books that would make it a violation to title a book BOLD and Easy Crochet Patterns. Bold and Easy Summer Salads etc. and has been paired together for decades and across product lines. I think this move by Random House to get the TMs is more of a warning growl that mimics need to find their own bone to chew, this one is theirs and they will bite. just my thoughts I could be wrong.

[@TheHomeBoss]

Thank you, I agree a lot with your take on the situation.

[@Betty-Anne-Sister]

I agree with you as well. The first thing I learned in doing KDP is that people cannot trademark common words.

[@LuvLife389]

I think this is like someone trying to trademark "Activity Book"...."Bold and Easy" is too broad and I hope that is not approved.

[@Colormecreatives-it6tg]

Marina art design has good information about this also she has a lawyer on to this also

[@mujuw]

I stand by your recommendation to come up with unique title ideas. Highly commendable approach 😊 But… Trademarking common descriptive terms like this is completely unenforceable (at least in the UK). You can only enforceably trademark the *visual mark* of that descriptive term so it can’t be *visually* copied. So: these word marks might exist, but they’re relatively inconsequential. I work for an established UK book publisher and we tried to do exactly this, for one of our own brands, in the past (we were trying to stop copycats from using our title). Amazon refused to enforce our trademark infringement reports on the basis that we had trademarked a widely used descriptive term.

[@TheHomeBoss]

Thank you so much for your comment and sharing your experience. Very interesting point.

[@denisedeakins4828]

Hi Nuria, I made a book for Christmas using this phrase. Is it ok to leave it as it is if we made it before copyright was obtained? Or should we be unpublishing them and making alterations before re loading to KDP?

[@urgone7973]

Their trademark is a description, not a brand. Therefore this application won't go through. Simple as that! That's not the first case this happened and it won't be the last. The courts have decided about this numerous times. Their are too many other larger publishers already using this phrase, so they will bring this too court long before any of us are at risk.

[@TheHomeBoss]

It's not trademarked right now and I doubt they will be able to trademark some of their submissions. I don't think we should worry about books already published. I would avoid using terms that have already been used for other books going forward.

[@denisedeakins4828]

@@TheHomeBossThank you. I will steer away from this phrase in the future. I did start to come up with a different phrase along similar lines for a book I made earlier in the year, so I will do that from now on.

[@YourChicGeek]

Thanks for the video Nuria!

[@geraldcurk]

This whole print on demand thing on Amazon ist totally f.u.cked up!

[@JeraldJamesCapao]

They want to monopolize it 😂

[@maitreya1906]

Just don't copy anyone. Be original

[@dfranca8801]

Trademarks for general words are really ridiculous in my view. General words should be used by everyone, its our born rights for everyone in this world. One particular person can get trademark and ask other people not to use the word, is not right. They can coin a new word and they can get trademark, its their own idea. These words are common and it will be used by generations even people yet to born have rights to use those words. It's my personal opinion, pls correct me if iam wrong

[@delaslight]

How can they trademark general words? It is illegal! Where did they trademark these words? I know it is illegal in EU

[@dfranca8801]

rightly said

[@delaslight]

There is nothing original about the words easy and bold

[@mn2410]

Well...that is not their identity as everybody knows the term Bold and Easy comes from Meg Publishing and coco wyo copied her ideas many times. People, please go and watch Marina Art Design videos in this regard and do not panic at all. None of those phrases were originated by coco wy since these days with AI and chat Gpt everyone creates phrases and things. I have very unique phrases in my book titles which I got from chat Gpt. Please DO NOT unpublish any of your books since NONE of those phrases will get accepted by PTO. I have not used any of these phrases by far in any of my books but just for this matter I will use the term Bold and Easy for the book I am publishing in two days.

[@bigmusic3406]

Boycott coco wyo