Friday, March 14, 2008

A Man Who Had Serious Issues

The lighter side of my job as a trademark paralegal is that I often come across odd or amusing trademarks that people try to register. One of my all time favorites was an application for the mark Saving Ryan's Privates. The mark was to be the title for an adult film.

Today, while doing a trademark scan for one of our clients, one of the hits brought up by the search criteria I used was for an application filed by one Raymond D. Dufresne of Seekonk, Massachusetts for the acronym WHACKA and the words WOMAN HATERS CLUB OF AMERICA W.H.C.A., with the universal prohibition symbol of the circle with a diagonal line across the inside superimposed over the biological symbol for a woman. The application was for a collective mark"indicating membership in a social club of woman haters."

I tried to see if I could find any information on Mr. Dufresne on Google, but none of the Raymond Dufresnes turned up by the search appeared to be him, so I could not find anything that might shed a little light on this guy. The application itself was abandoned all the way back in 1991.

It just boggled my mind how someone not only found himself hating an entire gender, half the human race as it were, but that he actively sought to form an association of like-minded men. Maybe he is dead. Or perhaps he was committed to a psychiatric facility. Or, there might be the slim chance that he got over his hatred of women and found true love and happiness. Who knows? But I thought it was amusing enough to share with my readers.

2 comments:

Joe said...

Al Bundy lives!

Stardust said...

Al Bundy's club was called NO MA'AM. . . National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood. The organization's goal is to prevent the ascent of female masterhood. While NO MA'AM wishes to prevent the rise of women, the very ideals they stand for (beer, bikinis, and eating) often prevent them from doing much else besides drinking, reading "Big-Uns" magazines, and gorging themselves on snack food. The few actual meetings of NO MA'AM that are shown typically involve getting drunk, initiating new members, and complaining about their wives. Maybe this Raymond D. Dufresne of Seekonk, Massachusetts thought it was a good idea?

I am embarrassed that I know that much about it. Blush.