NBC sues alleged “trademark squatter” for buying the rights to the name Dunder Mifflin

In what appears to be a classic Michael Scott-style bungling, NBCUniversal is currently unable to get the trademark on the name “Dunder Mifflin” (the fictional paper company from The Office) because a different company—Jay Kennette Media Group—actually owns it. That comes from Deadline, which says NBCUniversal is appealing the rejection it received from the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office and suing Jay Kennette Media Group for allegedly being a “trademark squatter” that has “built a business based on registering trademarks belonging to others” and then either selling those trademarks back to their “rightful” owners or actually selling merchandise related to the trademarks.

But one does not become an alleged trademark squatter by owning one trademark, so what else does Jay Kennette Media Group own? Well, according to Trademarkia (which claims to be a “free search engine of publicly available government records,” but might not be 100% accurate) it owns “Tree Hill Ravens” (the basketball team from One Tree Hill), “Dillon Football” (as in Dillon, Texas from Friday Night Lights), “Nostromo” (the ship from Alien), “Super Saiyan” (when Goku’s hair turns yellow), and “Hillman College” (from A Different World), in addition to Dunder Mifflin.

It also apparently used to own “Weyland Yutani” (the evil company from the Alien movies), “Miskatonic University” (where Cthulhu got his degree), and “Tyrell Corporation” (the evil company from Blade Runner). Jay Kennette Media Group may have perfectly legitimate claims to those trademarks, or the website might be wrong. We don’t know. It’s just funny to imagine a universe where the same parent company owns both Dunder Mifflin and the Nostromo.

Excuse us while we go log on to AO3 to start writing that up. We’re thinking Michael as Ripley, Jim as Dallas, Dwight as the android, Toby as the guy John Hurt plays who gets killed by the chestburster…