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PSA: Rearz Inc. attempting to trademark "Omutsu"


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How would it make you feel if OmoOrg one day tried to trademark the term "Omorashi"?

What if we made it clear we owned the word and legally banned the community from making use of the term?

You'd probably be pretty mad, right? Justifiably so.

 

Unfortunately, that is exactly what a Canadian company called Rearz, Inc. is trying to do with the term Omutsu.

Omutsu, as you may already know, is essentially just Japanese for "diaper." It is a term we use widely in OmoOrg's AB/DL community, as it goes hand-in-hand with Omorashi.

 

It's important to note that this is not the first time Rearz, Inc. has done this, either.

Last year, the company notoriously attempted to trademark the term ABDL, leading to widespread company backlash that eventually forced them to abandon their pursuits.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180108/07500338956/community-backlash-leads-adult-diaper-company-to-drop-trademark-application-abdl.shtml

 

Now they are at it again, this time over the terms Omutsu and Onesie,

 

You can find the patent application for Omutsu here:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/app/opic-cipo/trdmrks/srch/viewTrademark?id=1922466&lang=eng&tab=reg

 

Despite widespread outlash, Rearz Inc. has opted to completely ignore the communities outcry; going as far as to block people who demand an explanation for the trademark applications on Twitter.

I have personally reached out to Rearz Inc. several times in a request for a comment or some explanation, and warned that if they did not at least respond to the community on this issue, I would publish an official article on OmoOrg calling them out for it. Over 1 month later, we're still waiting.

 

If you agree with me that a company trying to trademark general words such as "Omutsu" and "ABDL" is shady and should not be tolerated, help make your voice heard.

Call them out for trademark trolling on their Twitter and elsewhere. We can either make sure as many people as possible realize what they are doing, or ideally force them to abandon their trademark applications again.
https://twitter.com/RearzInc

 

Regardless of what happens, I want to be clear that even if their trademark for Omutsu is granted in Canada, OmoOrg has no intentions of recognizing it.

Outside of Canada, it is not legally valid to have a trademark of generic foreign words, and as such, their trademark application is not valid or enforceable outside of the country.

Regardless, these kinds of things should not be tolerated based on principle alone. What they are doing is shady and harmful to the community as a whole, which is why I strongly suggest everyone boycott this company and continue calling them out for what they do until they eventually do the right thing and abandon their shady trademark pursuits.

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Guest Masyanyalover

Posted

OK, I like Rearz, but WHAT THE FUCK?!

 

Omutsu is just a regular Japanese word, which means “diaper”. Diapers can’t be copyrighted. Neither can onesies, Onsies don’t ALWAYS refer to ABDL clothes.

 

ABDL also isn’t a copyrighted word either. It’s a term for AB (Adult baby), people who enjoy acting like babies or toddlers, and DL (Diaper Lover), people who enjoy wearing diapers, pull-ups, incontenice underwear/briefs smacked together into one fetish.

 

This is similar to Disney’s “Hakuna Matata” case. 

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Who are they to think they can trademark a fucking term used by the community who are into it? They have absolutely no right to whatsoever! I hope their attempts lead to failure again. 

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  • 👑 Administrator
2 minutes ago, Kei said:

This got e-mailed to me three times, by the way. 

Sorry about that, I'll look into why some of these are being sent multiple times.

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RearZ just needs to dissolve as a company. They've made too many stupid mistakes in the past couple of years to even get any support. They've tried to trademark ABDL, they made a, forgive the unintentional pun, piss poor decision with the breast cancer diaper crossover (using their Rebelz print as the diaper of choice,) and now this. 

 

Whoever is in charge at RearZ has their head so far up their own ass it makes me disgusted to even think that I had ordered their products before. I never will support them and will continuously dissuade my friends from buying their products.

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It's honestly really..stupid? It's just a term for diapers. I don't really get it, why they're trying to claim it. Whatever floats their boat--however, I do hope you win this fiasco since it'll be dramatic if they really make such a big deal over a Japanese term for 'diapers'. 

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I remember when a certain Japanese video game company, which shall remain nameless, trademarked the abbreviation "RPG". Does anyone else remember that? No, because it was utterly stupid and they quickly learned how impossible it was to stop people from using that abbreviation when talking about a "Role Playing Game". They completely gave up on it when the military started using it to describe "Rocket Propelled Grenade". But really what Rearz is doing is even more dumb, why don't they just try to copyright "the" or any other word in the dictionary? If they are so set on labeling one or more products with these words, which are common Japanese words even if Romanized, they should pursue trademarking intentional misspelling variations with the same identical phonetic pronunciation to them, lots of companies have successfully done such with no public backlash resulting.

As example "Omutsu" could be rewritten as:

  • Ohmutsu
  • Omutsue
  • Omutssu
  • Oomutsu
  • And so on, I think y'all get the idea.

Oh, even more fun, "ABDL" could be:

  • EhBeDeEl ("Eh" in Canadian English dialect is literally pronounced "A", which would make it a bit comical being a Canadian company.)
  • A-Bee-Dee-L
  • Again, I think everyone gets the idea. The name would still have the identical pronunciation to the original abbreviation, and instead of ticking people off trying to trademark the source they would instead be viewed as paying homage in a respect.
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OmoOrg can TM Omorashi until they're blue in the face. In fact anyone can. You can put TM next to anything that you claim to be your identifying mark in your particular market. It's only a courtesy request to others, to not use the name. Because you don't need to be the first one to TM it, and because it isn't regulated and enforced, you can imagine a lot of things get trademarked.  Registered Trademark ® on the other hand is registered, meaning you have reserved the right as the first registerer to have exclusive use of the mark.

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Disclosure: I dont know dick about Canadian trademark law, I'm basing the following on my understanding of US trademark law.

I want to start by stating that contacting trademark/ patent trolls on their bullshit is completely pointless.  They know they're bullshit artists and calling them out directly on it is an exercise in futility.  You can usually dispute a trademark claim with whatever agency handles this, and my advice would be to do exactly that.  Find the contact info for whoever the public contact is for this department and appeal to them while the application is still pending.  Additionally, if there is a Twitter or other social media face of this organization then going at this publically might be even better.  If you flood the Twitter feed of a government agency with examples of generic use to dispute the trademark application (which, by necessity, would mean linking to  bunch of pornography websites) then it's likely that the officials in charge of trademarks will reject their claim just to make the porn on their feed go away XD.

Beyond that, this problem is probably moot anyways.  Canadian copyright can't be enforced outside of Canada, for the most part.  And unless it can be proven that any company that rearz would ever sue was marketing a product called "omutsu", it wouldn't go anywhere.  A trademark doesnt mean that people can be sued just for typing the word "omutsu", or even having that word as, say, a forum title.  If that was the case then no tech website could ever mention "AMD" or "Intel", and automotive communities would never be able to identify the makes and models of their vehicles.  

Think about it, Prince sued anyone who ever thought about covering, sampling, or parodying his songs, but he never sued anyone just for saying his name.  That would be absurd and impossible.  A trademark just means that you can brand a product, service, or company exclusively with a word, phrase, or symbol. It doesn't mean that the word suddenly becomes unspeakable ala you know who.  

That being said, there is a risk that they would simply use their trademark to harass other entities in civil court.  Sending out cease and desist letters demanding sums of money for damages even when there is no case is basically what patent trolls exist to do.  They know they can't win in court, so they demand settlement money that is usually just under what the cost of a legal defense would be so that no matter what the defendant is screwed.  However, this would still only be possible in Canadian courts, as far as I can suss out.

 

Basically, start petitions and start blasting complaints out to Canadian trademark officials and politicians.  Draw attention to this now while it's still pending.  It shouldn't be too hard to cause a stir within the responsible political and/ or administrative bodies given the subject matter.

One other thought, if there are japanese abdl supply companies, pornographers, etc... that exist, it might be a good idea to reach out to them and make them aware of the situation.  Having a japanese company step in and complain to the Canadian government that rearz is attempting to trademark generic terms may have somewhat more weight.

 

Just my thoughts, I'm probably way off-base or missing a major point but I tried!

 

Edit: also, as far as anyone trying t trademark "omorashi", it's a really tough case to make to the trademark office when someone else has owned the domain name for that trademark for many years before the application was filed.  I tried, and I didn't find and domain names already in existence for "omutsu", though it might be that I just dont know the right top level domain for a site of that name.

Edited by Omodeprived (see edit history)
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  • 👑 Administrator
3 hours ago, Lydia0 said:

This is just super stupid. We'll just start using a new word even if they succeed.

No we won't, we'll just ignore the trademark completely because they can't realistically enforce it, lol.

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