If you couldn’t tell by the title (it’s a somewhat cryptic reference), this post pertains, yet again, to a pop-culture icon attempting to get a trademark on an element of a performance. For this reason, you might be justified in wondering if I have Katy Perry and Taylor Swift on repeat in my iTunes playlist. Well, I don’t. The truth is, there have been a lot of interesting developments lately in the trademark world involving these pop stars, who seem to be as interesting in their intellectual property protection strategies as they are in their performances.

At this point, unless you live under a rock or haven’t read this blog (I forgive you, I promise), you should probably be familiar with the dancing sharks that Katy Perry used in her performance at this year’s Super Bowl. Here’s a picture to remind you. 

The dancing sharks went viral mainly because one of the sharks decided to go rogue in its performance and not follow the choreography. I guess I would do the same thing if I was in the spotlight dancing for an audience of over 100 million people. But I digress.

Perhaps one totally unintended consequence (or benefit) of the choreography malfunction was the tremendous following these sharks acquired after the Super Bowl performance. Indeed, immediately after the performance, artists jumped on the opportunity 3D making models of the sharks and selling them on sites like Shapeways. Of course, other enterprising artists struck to Etsy to sell shirts bearing the cute but aloof shark.

By now its practically a universal symbol of, well, I’m not quite sure. Only that I have seen it in numerous avatars and it has generally gone “viral”. Just in time for Easter somebody has actually made one of these fanciful shark figures out of peeps. I’m talking of course about Katy Perry’s sharks from her halftime show during the Super Bowl. Specifically, the left shark, who seems to have made up his own choreography. What is it about these sharks that seems to have tickled so many people pink?

I’m really not able to say, just like I can’t say what caused the “it’s peanut butter jelly time” dancing banana to take off. I guess people on the internet really have a penchant for taking short clips of comical figures, pairing them with a short pithy statement, and using it to charm fellow internet users with a laugh, in an endless pursuit of a million Facebook likes. Or maybe it stems from Twitter’s 140 character limit rule; it really forces us to make the message small and compact. Just as Josh Billings said: “There’s great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.” 

Take the lyrics from this catchy song from Carly Rae Jepsen:


“Hey I just met you
And this is crazy
But here’s my number
So call me maybe”

They should sound fairly familiar, considering they are from a song that placed high on the Billboard charts (this means it was widely played!) and its election as Song of the Year in 2012 by MTV (this means… actually, I have no idea). Also, if you have kids in the age range of 10-18 or even early 20’s, if you happen to catch a little of their music, you’ve probably heard this song before. Although these lyrics represent just a snippet of the song, they are probably the most highly quoted.