“PUSH” The Talking Trashcan Shoves Disney Fans Into Aiding Contract Negotiations

WDWNT on February 18, 2014

Undoubtedly you’ve heard rumors this week that PUSH, the talking trashcan from Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom, may be leaving forever on Saturday. In fact, Disney fans have been using the hashtag on twitter “#SavePUSH” religiously over the last 24 hours in desperation to convince Disney not to can the trashcan.

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Well, since then, a Disney spokesperson has been quoted that the long-time character “isn’t going anywhere”. In fact, the character may have never been in real jeopardy at all.

Rumor has it that contract negotiations for PUSH were reaching a deadline this week and whoever was negotiating for the character may have pushed some otherwise reputable members of the Disney online community into starting the online campaign instead of taking whatever deal was on the table. So, to make this clear, PUSH’s owner apparently was unhappy with how his negotiations for more money were going and decided it would be best to use fans and members of the media to convince Disney to pay him more money.

Many Disney fan websites jumped on the band-wagon over the course of the last day and posted about the possible end of PUSH, probably unaware that they were being used and thinking they were doing some good for the performer and the fans of the character.

While recent similar campaigns, such as the one to save Billy Hill and the Hillbillies, were reportedly started by fans after an official statement about the performers had been made to some department in the company, this could be the first time a performer has tried to use manipulation in social media to assure they have a job at Disney at their desired pay rate. If true, this could certainly mean an interesting future for how Disney handles contract negotiations with entertainers at the parks. One could only assume that there are some people in management at Walt Disney World who are very unhappy with the situation, to say the least…

UPDATE: As of Sunday, Disney has informed cast members internally that PUSH will no longer be greeting guests and his contract will not be renewed. It is unclear at this time if this was caused by the scandal over the last 2 days or if they just simply could not reach an agreement. We will provide more info if and when it becomes available.

So, what do you think about this? Does this bother you? Why or why not?

PUSH’s Contract Not the Only Thing Expired, Disney May Continue Character

WDWNT on February 18, 2014

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This morning, as the PUSH scandal was reaching new heights, Jason Garcia, reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, tweeted that “Inventor and co-owner of PUSH says contract with Disney lapsed over concerns about intellectual property rights to the character.”  This got me (Jason Diffendal) thinking, I wonder if Disney’s lawyers figured out a way to do their own version of PUSH and not have to deal with contract negotiations with the current owner of PUSH.  Well, it appears that this just may be the reason that the contract with PUSH was not renewed.

PUSH the Talking Trash Can was registered for trademark protection with the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 11, 2000, and the trademark was officially registered on March 19, 2002 as Trademark # 2548953.

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However, the laws and requirements pertaining to trademarks are not trivial, and one important requirement is that, in order to maintain ownership of a trademark, the trademark must be in common usage on a regular basis, and the owner must file paperwork attesting to this fact.  The particular law is Section 8 of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §1058.  Owners must file what is called a “Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use” between the 5th and 6th years after the registration date.  For PUSH, that would have been sometime between 2007 and 2008.   The USPTO will cancel any registration on either the Principal Register or the Supplemental Register if a timely §8 Declaration is not filed by the current owner of the registration during the prescribed time periods. (Full details here.)

Searching the USPTO’s Trademark Database for the current status of this trademark, I found this ominous statement: “Registration cancelled because registrant did not file an acceptable declaration under Section 8.”  So it appears that PUSH’s owner failed to file the proper paperwork in 2008 to maintain ownership of the trademark, and so the registration was cancelled on December 27, 2008.  This unfortunate turn of events means that PUSH is no longer owned by “Robot Productions, Inc.” (Note that the company has apparently changed their name since then.)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it is entirely possible that Disney’s lawyers discovered this information and thus determined that Disney could create their own version of PUSH without infringing any intellectual property belonging to Robot Productions, Inc.  Whether this is actually the case, I do not know, but certainly Disney’s highly intelligent lawyers have done things like this in the past, so it would not be a surprise at all if this turns out to be true. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.