Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi from MTV’s The Jersey Shore, a reality show that chronicles the party antics of some of New Jersey’s finest youths, has been through a lot recently.  So naturally, when I heard that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Snooki’s application to trademark her signature nickname for use in “entertainment in the nature of personal appearances by a television personality,” I was almost as distraught as the last six times Sammi Sweetheart and Ronnie, the TV show’s power couple, broke up on camera. The U.S. PTO states that Snooki’s trademark would be too similar to an existing trademark registered for the children’s book The Adventures of Snooky.  The standard for denying trademarks is “likelihood of confusion” between the two marks. Snooky is referred to by one Amazon.com customer as “a good role model for children,” and Snooki is also a good role model for children.  The Adventures of Snooky is filled with holographic images, and coincidentally, so are the adventures of real-life Snooki. Given these striking similarities, I can see why the U.S. PTO would deny the trademark.

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