A demure and mindful trademark investigation

At this point, you either already know about the “very demure, very mindful” meme that originated on TikTok, or you have neither the interest nor the capacity to understand. It is simply A Thing, a viral catchphrase that may become as ubiquitous in the 2020s as “eyebrows on fleek” was in the 2010s. And that is why every tabloid in America is running a story about a dispute over an application to register “Very Demure… Very Mindful…” as a trademark.

The headlines go like this: 

• Trademarks Are Very Demure, Very Mindful (TMZ)
• TikToker Jools Lebron Sobs Over Trademark Filing in Deleted TikTok (also TMZ)
• Who is Jefferson Bates and when did he trademark Jools Lebron’s very mindful very demure TikTok trend? (The Sun) 
• Newest internet villain? Man files trademark for Jools Lebron’s ‘very mindful, very demure’ (USA Today)
• ‘Very demure’ catchphrase filed for trademark by Washington State man, not influencer who popularized trend (TODAY.com)
• ‘Very Demure, Very Mindful’ trendsetter Jools Lebron loses trademark rights, sobs on TikTok (Hindustan Times)
• Jools Lebron, the creator of ‘very demure, very mindful,’ might not own its trademark (Mashable)

The first thing I want to say is that trademark is not the same as copyright, regardless of what’s written in The Sun article. The second is that a trademark is not the same as a trademark registration. The third — and most salient — thing is this: an application to register a trademark is neither.

To lay out some basics, a trademark is any word, phrase, image, or combination thereof that is used in commerce to identify what a layperson might call a “brand” — even things like the Law & Order “dun-DUN” or the NBC chimes are trademarks. It’s legally possible to have a common law trademark with no paperwork, but most companies file for a trademark registration, because having that entry in a government database makes it easier to sue for infringement. It’s a bit like having a driver’s license or passport: you’re still you without one, but the paperwork will cut through a lot of hassle when somebody asks for proof. 

The “very demure, very mindful” trademark filing, however, is just an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office. It’s a pending registration that the USPTO hasn’t ruled on, roughly equivalent to the numbered ticket you’d get for turning in a few forms at the DMV.  

Mr. Verydemure Verymindful? Please take a seat in the waiting area. We’ll call out your number in approximately eight months. 

Anyone can apply for a registration, but you’re not guaranteed to get one. Maybe your application overlaps too much with a preexisting registration in the database. Maybe the trademark you’ve picked is a tad bit too generic. Depending on what kind of paperwork you’re filing, it’s possible you didn’t include enough documentation of how the trademark is being used in the real world. And sometimes, the examining attorney who was assigned to your application is feeling cranky that day and decides to pick on you. (The inverse can be true as well — the examiner might be a little too ready to go home, and rubber-stamps something that probably shouldn’t have been approved.)  

About a week ago, someone named Jefferson A. Bates filed the application to register “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” as a trademark. A whole lot of people know who TikTok influencer Jools Lebron is — she was on Jimmy Kimmel just last week — and she is pretty widely acknowledged as the originator of the “very demure” meme. She’s made deals with Verizon and Netflix all on the back of “demure.” No one knows who Jefferson A. Bates is, except that his email address is tied to the publisher of a defunct emoji app called “Insta LOL Emoji,” which has a Facebook page featuring a screenshot of an X post about (of all things) the intellectual property rights for Squid Game.

The services that Bates wants to cover are “Advertising, marketing and promotional services related to all industries for the purpose of facilitating networking and socializing opportunities for business purposes,” a series of words that made me do a spit-take. It’s not just that “advertising, marketing, and promotional services” is a hilarious category to use someone else’s TikTok meme for — the “all industries” tips it over into genuinely sublime comedy. 

Even if you’re running one of the biggest companies on earth, you can still only register a mark for a finite range of goods and services. And the more goods and services you claim, the more pushback you’ll get from the Trademark Office. Having a trademark doesn’t mean you “own” a word or phrase in the English language, and having that trademark in one industry doesn’t let you flex on all the others. Apple obviously owns the trademark for all kinds of things, ranging from phones to personal computers to television streaming services, but it can’t stop anyone from selling a fruit while calling it an apple. (In fact, the company was mired in years of legal finagling over its music-related services, thanks to the Beatles’ Apple Records.) Two entirely different companies manufacture Dove chocolate (“For: IC 030 Cocoa”) and Dove deodorant (“For: IC 003 Body wash and body bars soap; deodorants; hair care preparations”). Spirit Halloween (“For: IC 035 retail store services featuring Halloween merchandise”) and Spirit Airlines (“For: IC 039 Scheduled and chartered air transportation”) have no relation to each other. 

And crucially, during the application process, other people can file to oppose the registration. (In 2014, Disney tried — unsuccessfully — to block the registration of Deadmau5’s logo.) 

Media coverage sometimes treats the trademark system like a weapon that lets hucksters sweep in to lock up somebody else’s meme or viral phrase. But the registration system can actually serve the opposite purpose. People can check the registers to get the lay of the land when branding their latest hustle, and they can keep an eye on new filings for similar marks that could edge in on their turf.

So Jools Lebron finding out about the “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” trademark application and then getting mad about it is — theoretically speaking — all part of the process. Lebron hasn’t lost a trademark, she’s been given a heads up that someone else is crowding in on her whole deal. 

Lebron could, for instance, oppose Bates’ application on the grounds that she was using the trademark first, even without a preexisting registration. That deal with Verizon, for example, kind of looks like use in commerce! Bates, meanwhile, is not inking deals with megacorporations. Once again, this application is in the extremely early stages. It will likely sit around for months before reaching an examining attorney, during which time people (including Lebron) could file their own applications. Plenty of trademarks never even make it through this phase. 

This isn’t to say that things are guaranteed to go smoothly for Lebron. Bates filing first is a pain in the ass. Still, the headlines that indicate that she has already lost are wildly incorrect. And meanwhile, Jefferson A. Bates may end up regretting his choice to file in a particularly un-demure, non-mindful fashion. Bates seemingly didn’t use an attorney to submit the application, which is of course not a necessity — the government is not out to girlboss, gaslight, and gatekeep the Patent and Trademark Office. But now, what appears to be Bates’ home address is very visible in this public-facing database, along with a phone number and email address. 

At this exact moment in time, Jools Lebron has never been more popular. After TMZ ran its exclusive about the trademark registration application, she reportedly wept in a since-deleted TikTok, kicking off a wave of online fury directed towards the mysterious Jefferson A. Bates. When The Verge reached out to the email address listed in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) system, we received a delivery error stating, “Their inbox is full, or it’s getting too much mail right now.”

The mailing address in the Trademark Office’s database seems to be for a brick-and-beige home that I will otherwise refrain from describing. Someone has already created a Google Maps listing for “Very Demure Very Mindful” at this address, with the official website listed as a link to the TSDR page for the pending “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” application. As of writing, four people have reviewed the listing, giving it an average rating of 1.0 out of 5.0 stars. “Jefferson Bates, you should be ashamed of yourself!!” one reviewer writes. “Not very demure,” says another.