YoyoFactory trademarks Offstring?

I just got a YoyoFactory EDIT: Flight; not Wing and noticed that “Offstring” is now trademarked by Rapid Plastics. Is this new? What does this mean to others making Off-string (4A) yo-yo’s?

Why would YoyoFactory trademark a general term like that? What purpose will a trademark that removes a space or hyphen from an accepted yo-yo category-name serve?

Counter-Weight; Counterweight, CounterWeight… I want to be a trademark lawyer now.

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That is a very very old yoyo you are referring to actually… Like 10+ years. (2008). They did have a registered trademark on a super old yoyo called the ‘offstring’ - but it was specific to a yoyo being called that - not the style/division…

offstring-schematic

And what specific yoyo are you seeing that referenced or what packaging (current)?

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Sorry, my mistake. It was a Flight. I just got it from YYE.

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I guess my original question still stands:

  1. Why would YoyoFactory trademark a term that simply removes a space or hyphen from a generally accepted competition category name?
  2. What does this mean for Off-String yo-yo makers?

“Offstring” as a name of a yoyo was copyrighted. Another company can not name their yoyo “Offstring.” Any yoyo can be described as offstring just not be named “Offstring.”

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This is a trademark. Not a copyright.

How YoyoFactory could obtain a trademark on a universally accepted name for a yo-yo competition-category is hard to understand. It appears to me that YoyoFactory has an exclusive right to describe yo-yo used for off string play as “Offstring”.

Essentially, “Offstring” is now owned by YoyoFactory as a way to describe their brand of off string yo-yo’s.

Lawyers…

If that’s the case then they’re doing a pretty bad job enforcing it. I just took a quick look around some stores and the term seems to be used freely, even by American companies like Duncan and Zeekio. If they were trying to control the name of the style I think they would have trademarked “4A” as well as all variations of “offstring,” like Duncan did with 5A.

Quick internet search and it appears they don’t have a trademark on “offstring”.

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Off string is the division and style name.

No claim made on that

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