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Nintendo announced yesterday that it had filed a trademark for the catch-phrase, “It’s On Like Donkey Kong.”
The announcement was quickly picked up by many news outlets and became one of the top five trending topics in the entire world on Twitter. Yes, a trademark story!
Normally, a news item like this would cause a stink about a company being overly aggressive, but instead most people seemed to allow Nintendo to score some points for realizing (and claiming) the cultural cache of the phrase, “It’s On Like Donkey Kong,” which has been used in an Ice Cube song, American Wedding, and most recently, in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
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All that said, did Nintendo really file a trademark application? We couldn’t find one on the USPTO’s website. Was it a silly PR hoax to promote the November 21 release of Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii? Could be. Nintendo wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Our favorite theory belongs to a commenter at Slashdot, who wrote: “it could also be as simple as someone in marketing deciding to use the phrase in advertisements (as a pop culture reference and nothing more), and the legal team, entirely by force of habit, attempting to trademark every last letter on the advertisement copy on a just-in-case-it-works basis.”
That sounds entirely plausible.
Still, and maybe we’re taking this a little too seriously, but we’d be curious to read the actual trademark application to see if the company really did its due diligence on prior art. After all, Nintendo didn’t originate the phrase. And so, we’re left with an uncomfortable feeling about a company wanting to retire commercial use of a phrase that’s been in use in film, television, and music for nearly two decades. Either that, or its decision to joke about it.
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