Earlier today I wrote about News Corp head Rupert Murdoch reportedly collaborating with Apple's Steve Jobs on his yet to be launched digital newspaper the Daily.
It looks like Murdoch's Daily faces some legal hurdles before anyone has a chance to download it for use on their iPad, iPhone, and/or iPod -- that is, at least when it comes to the digital publication's name.
As Jeff Bercovici writes for Forbes' Mixed Media blog:
Why does Rupert Murdoch keep picking names for his new tablet-based newspaper/publication/whatever that other people don't want him to have? First it was The Daily Planet, until DC Comics, which owns the right to that name, had its say. Now Murdoch has settled on The Daily, but IMG, the talent agency-turned-media powerhouse, is protesting.
“We are very, very concerned about this,” says Brandusa Niro, vice president and editor in chief of IMG Publishing, which puts out a newspaper called The Daily that covers fashion, gossip and media.
[...]
This could be fun. Niro's Daily is a small and, outside of the fashion world, somewhat obscure publication, but IMG has serious clout. Owned by billionaire Teddy Forstmann, it's a fast-growing conglomerate whose businesses span sports marketing, modeling, events and media.
On the other hand, The Daily is about as generic a name as you can get for a daily news publication. You can trademark a specific expression of a name like that, but not the name itself. In fact, that's exactly what News Corp. appears to have done in its own trademark filing. On Oct. 22, 2010 — the day I published my story saying that was the name News Corp. was planning to use — an entity called News DP Holdings filed a trademark application seeking to use that name for “entertainment services, namely, the provision of multimedia content distributed via mobile and stationary consumer electronic devices.” The logo pictured at the top of this post was part of the application.
So, if you worked for Murdoch (I said “if”), what would you suggest naming his latest venture? Remember not to pick something that's already taken. He's already done that… twice.
Wait, what's the definition of insanity?
Previously: