Space Force: Netflix, Trump & Trademarks
As most of us have been restricted to fixed locations for a better part of 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic, quite a lot of us have turned to online streaming sources for regular entertainment. One such service which has frequently produced quality content would be Netflix. Many in the general public seem to enjoy one particular political satire web series in particular, “Space Force” starring Steve Carell (famous for playing Michael Scott on the NBC sitcom “The Office”). Although it might not seem like it, this Netflix original web series might cause quite a lot of issues for both the Trump Administration and the US military, especially from the perspective of intellectual property (IP) laws.
Netflix’s “Space Force” is a political satire which mocks one of President Trump’s pet projects, the creation of a new military branch (similar to the US Army or US Navy) of the same name. Despite US military leadership insisting that a separate branch for military operations in space (namely satellite maintenance and operation) isn’t necessary as existing branches have departments which handle this task, President Trump has decided to continue with the creation of this Space Force (it still hasn’t been properly implemented or incorporated into the existing military command structure as of the time of writing).
A recent issue for the creation of Space Force to pop up would be that Netflix managed to secure the trademarks for “Space Force” before the actual US military. This can lead to the Trump Administration to take one of the following two options:
• They can challenge Netflix’s “Space Force” trademark at court (it should be noted that this action has a low success rate as people have successfully applied and maintained trademarks for simple world like “we” in the past).
• They could implement enough changes so that they don’t violate trademark laws (for example, the could rename this military branch as the US Space Corps)
In conclusion, this recent debacle between Netflix and the US military is just the latest chapter in Trump’s Space Force saga.
