Is #Cockygate Over?

1914 hardcover edition

Yesterday, the internet (or at least the writer circles I frequent) was abuzz with the news that Faleena Hopkins had settled with Jennifer Watson and Tara Crescent over the ill-advised trademarking of the word "cocky".

According to an article last night on the Inquisitr website, part of the settlement includes Hopkins' withdrawal of her trademark. However, the trademark is still listed on the USTPO website as of this writing. Given the speed of the federal government, it may be days or weeks before we know for sure that #cockygate has ended.

Or has it?

1997 mass market paperback edition

Recently, author Michael Scott Earle not only filed for a trademark on the common fantasy term "dragon slayer", but he also filed a trademark for a certain styling of a cover where the title and series name are at the top, the author name is at the bottom, and a human is holding a weapon. This style of cover has been in use for over a century. Boing Boing has a couple of articles about the matter, but my browser wants to hang up every time I try to access them.

An even more interesting question is whether defending the trademark applications are worth it to Earle. Earlier this summer, his books disappeared from Amazon, lock-stock-and-barrel, during the recent purge of authors who allegedly broke the Amazon TOS by using black-hat and gray-hat marketing tricks.

[Edit to add: Earle has apparently abandoned the attempt to trademark the cover style in question.

However, if you want to file a protest on his application to trademark the term "dragon slayer" (which you should do if you ever want to write books about dragon slayers in the future), here's some tips on writing a letter of protest to the US Patent and Trademark Office.]