Banksy loses the trademark battle of his “Flower Launcher”, now you can use it too

Banksy always plays on the “surprise effect”, this is well known. But would you have ever imagined that he would have claimed the authorship of one of his works, pretending to remain anonymous? For more than twenty years he is the king of an undercovered life and he appears and disappears whenever he wants like BATMAN OR SUPERMAN. This time, however, someone stopped him.

In fact, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) invalidated the trademark of one of his most famous works, the “Flower Launcher”, replying to Banksy request to stop the illicit use of his work by “Full Color Black”, a greeting card company based in Great Britain.

Banksy’s “Flower Launcher” is so famous that they even made a mosaic of it

THAT’S NOT ALL. In fact, this matter could cause him some problems with his past and future works because probably, no other trademark already filed by the artist with the same logic, will be able to be validated in the European Union. Dear Banksy, is not a good day for you.

What’s with a street artist and a greeting card company?

Apparently nothing. In this story, however, “Full Color Black” RAISED THE VOICE against the artist defense strategies.

But let’s go in order. It all began in 2014 when Banksy, knowing that he could not use to copyright law due to his anonymity, tried to file the trademark of his “Flower Launcher” by founding a company (Ed., if you file a trademark with a company the trademark does not need to refer to your first and last name); four years later, in 2018, Banksy denounced the greeting card company for using his image for the purpose of selling their products.

Full Color Black uses a lot of Banksy graffiti for its greeting cards

The little Full Color Black was not intimidated by the “big” Banksy and challenged him going to the “HEART OF THE MATTER“: in fact they declared that the artist trademark was not valid because Banksy filed it without having the real intention to use it for a commercial activity (Ed., a trademark to be valid must be used to market goods or services).

How Banksy reacted to this TWIST? As always, he did it his way and opened her pop-up store in London last year probably with the aim of demonstrating to use the trademark commercialy. This fact did not convince the EUIPO that invalidated his trademark and also condemned Banksy to pay the legal fees of Full Color Black (Ed., among the many reasons of the EUIPO that you can find here, they mentioned the artist “bad intention”).

Oggetti assurdi nello pop-up store di Banksy

The artist has two months to bring an action. Probably, if the street artist reveals his real identity, he could be able to convince the judges to obtain the copyright of his future works. It will be the right time to see BANKSY GET OUT OF ANONYMITY? Maybe you find out it’s your neighbor.

___

Have an idea? Protect it with Tutelio! Place your first project and get the certificate of authorship. It’s free!