Following on from my comments about News International’s upcoming London evening freesheet that, if applied to the Dublin market would certainly prove a challenge to the dominance of the Evening Herald I decided to snoop around the Irish Patents Office to see if NI had made any recent and interesting filings.
NI currently have 8 trademark applications listed on the site, two of which (variations on ‘Big‘ and ‘ID‘ have been withdrawn).
Two of the remaining applications which were filed in 2006 were ‘Man of the World‘ and ‘Street Psychic‘, both put forward in March. The first is almost certainly of some connection to the NI Sunday tabloid ‘News of the World’ and may refer to some kind of competition they are going to hold (or have held, I don’t read it). ‘Street Psychic’ is a little bit more interesting, although it is likely to be some kind of suppliment as the copyright refers to publications and printed information and is unlikely to be a stand-alone magazine.
‘The Globe‘ was trademarked in 2002, with all the standard classes covered to allow for a trademarked publication under that title. The title is indeed a very standard “newsy” name although it seems to have come of nothing in the 4 years since its filing.
The most interesting finding of the whole thing comes with the final three trademarks; ‘The Day‘, ‘The Irish Day‘ and ‘Seize The Day‘. Again the titles are quite fitting of a daily news publication, with the second obviously being the RoI version and the latter being a catchphrase or slogan of the publication. Could these be part of an upcoming newspaper launch, freesheet or otherwise? Possibly, and the name certainly doesn’t preclude it being an evening publication, but given that they were filed in 2003 the organisation has certainly been biding its time with the venture.
For the record I’ve spoken to people in News International and they state that there are no plans at present for an Irish freesheet. Should ‘thelondonpaper‘ prove a financial success don’t be surprised if that changes (although someone else may have launched a Dublin evening freesheet at that stage)