Trumpet simulator app wins right to use iTrump name in court case
Billionaire President Trumps business operations have suffered a embarrassing defeat over the use of the Trump name after a small San-Francisco app developer Tom Scharfeld successfully defended the use of the iTrump name for his trumpet simulator app.
In a court case on 11th August the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board canceled an existing trademark which allowed the Trump organisation to use the name Trump for entertainment based purposes.
Even before Donald Trump ran for president he has been aggressively pursuing people using the Trump name by threatening to sue them but with Scharfield his lawyers under estimated his willingness to fight for the use of the name.
What is even more surprising is that Scharfield didn’t use lawyers but represented himself in court after deciding to learn trademark law and spending months researching past cases. He was able to show that the word trump had been used to mean trumpet before it was registered as a trademark by Donald Trumps business. The word trump it is also a colloquialism in Britain that means passing wind, although I don’t think Scharfield used that in his case.
Whether the President will appeal the courts decision is unknown but he does have deep pockets to keep paying for lawyers should he decides he wishes to. As for Scharfield he says he now want to get back to concentrating on marketing his app.