LDS Church Sues Dating Site for Using “Mormon”

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/hollywelker/7808/lds_church_sues_dating_site_for_using__mormon_/

April 24, 2014 1:52pm
Post by HOLLY WELKER

Question: has the word “Mormon” been copyrighted or trademarked in this country? If so, when? And who therefore holds the rights? I’ll be surprised if it’s the LDS church, since Mormon is not and never has been its official name. For a long time, in fact, the church tried to disavow it.

Yet now, asserting that “Mormon” is a brand, lawyers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are suing Mormon Match, an LDS dating website that tried to launch earlier this month, for using the word in its name.

The Utah-based church insists it has a claim on the terms “Mormon,” “LDS” and “Latter-day Saint” that supplants anyone else’s right to the terms, but people just keep using them how they want: Warren Jeffs is known as an FLDS leader; people who quit going to church still call themselves Mormon because it’s an accurate cultural descriptor even if it conveys nothing about their religious practice. The church may not like it, but its names are legitimately used as umbrella terms for groups and labels for individuals who don't pay tithing to Salt Lake.

I talked to a lawyer about this, who said the first thing any judge would ask is: How is the church harmed by Mormon Match’s use of the word Mormon? The site isn’t claiming any official connection to the church; it’s catering to Mormons and addressing Mormon concerns rather than asserting that it’s endorsed by the leaders of the LDS church. How does providing a service to Mormons hurt the Mormon church? Especially since that service—helping faithful Mormons meet and marry other faithful Mormons—is in line with the church’s goals and objectives? The church has been happy to leave LDSSingles.com alone, so why is it going after Mormon Match?

more at link

[darkangel218]

1. They will be okay once the dating site starts paying them 10% of their income

[nil desperandum]

2. Mormon as Brand

If the name represents their "brand" does that mean their religion is a product under their brand? If so would that put their organization into a different category for purposes of other legal definitions?

Here's what the US Patent office has when you search the word mormon:

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:5owih6.2.17

And here is a search on the patent website for anything containing the word mormon:

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4801:47aja4.1.1

add the word mormon in the basic search field, I couldn't get the result page to work correctly...my apologies.

It would appear that the word can copyrighted, so this will make for an interesting case I suspect.

[TlalocW]

3. Eh, just change it

To MagicUnderwearMatch.com

TlalocW

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Or "Lessmon"

[siligut]

5. The LDS church wants control of members

LDSSingles.com is probably under church control where interactions can be manipulated. Mormon Match is privately owned and would foul up carefully laid plans.

The way it was explained to me, the LDS powers that be, don't care about love. Matches are for religious, social and political purposes. The LDS marry very young so they can start a family and they are expected to marry within the religion. Then the wives are kept pregnant and the men have affairs. The men say their wives don't love/understand them and the wives say they love their children.

[cbayer]

6. Interestingly, there are many Mormon dating sites.

LDSplanet.com is apparently the most active

Most of them seem to use LDS instead of Mormon, so the issue really may be about the word.

[siligut]

7. You may be correct; but why is that?

I know some of the tricks used by the LDS PTB; they let others fight their battles when possible, especially those which aren't part of their Divine Liturgy (would make them look bad to the true believers) and they never show their cards. So suing for the use of the word "Mormon" may just be an oblique method of exposing this site as unacceptable for use by members. It may also be a show of power, the LDS likes to intimidate.

We would need to know who has control/owns the sites to make an accurate evaluation of my assertion and understanding why they would copyright or trademark "Mormon" and not "LDS" would help us understand other possible motivation.

[cbayer]

8. All good questions, and I would not even pretend to know.

It does seem to be a control issue, though. It seem they want to keep the "brand name" so that they can define it, but the legal issue seems to be whether it's use by this particular site harms them in any way.

I wonder if they tried to sue the producers/writers of "Book of Mormon" (the best play I have ever seen, BTW).

As the author points out, they don't seem to have much of a case here.