- Jeremy Clarkson is seeking to trademark his face to prevent misuse in unauthorised promotions, such as cryptocurrency scams
- Clarkson has clarified that this move is not for his ego but to protect his image and prevent false endorsements
- He also plans to trademark his piglet Richard Ham from his farming show and continues to push his ‘100% British’ pub product policy
Jeremy Clarkson is taking extreme measures to protect his own face.
What do model Puck Schrover, the band KISS and KFC’s Colonel Sanders all have in common?
They’ve all trademarked their faces (in one sense or another), and now the Clarkson’s Farm star, 65, is hoping to join that number in his latest outlandish move.
The decision came after he and his former Top Gear co-stars – James May and Richard Hammond – stumbled across an AI version of their faces used to promote a cryptocurrency scam.
At the time, Clarkson pushed back on X, writing: ‘To be clear, James May and I are not endorsing any kind of cryptocurrency. I don’t even know what cryptocurrency is. But it sounds ghastly.’
It is understood that last month, the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire host’s trademark application to the UK’s Intellectual Property Office was filed by his Amazon show production team as he gears up for a fifth and final outing of his popular farming series.
Despite appearances, the TV presenter made clear that this was an ‘ego-chasing’ scheme but, rather, essential.
As he told The Sun: ‘It’s for perfectly good reasons – its not just my ego running amok.
‘It’s an AI thing… because there’s so much activity around bitcoin or mortgage loans where my face, name, image, voice and so on has been used to promote things that I’m not promoting.’
Although even he acknowledged how bonkers a concept it is to legally protect the right to your own face.
He continued: ‘I’m protecting people from “me”, but it’s not me, promoting something that I’m not. God, it’s absurd.’
How to register a trademark in the UK
In the UK, it costs at least £170 to register a trade mark, according to the government website, with applications taking up to four months to process.
You can trade mark words, sounds, logos, colours or a combination of any of these.
Anything offensive, misleading, too common or generic cannot be trade marked.
It remains to be seen whether Jeremy Clarkson’s application is successful.
As for others who are protected by European trademark law, this includes F1 world champion Max Verstappen’s portrait and Dutch models Yasmin Wijnaldum and Rozanne Verduin portrait photographs which have also gone down this route.
In another sidequest, Clarkson also hopes to trademark his rescued runt of the litter, piglet Richard Ham (affectionately named after the Richard Hammond), who was a beloved animal star of season four.
The Diddly Squat owner has been stoking discourse this week after reaffirming his ban on products from his pub, Farmer’s Dog, that are not being ‘100% British’.
It came after he told a customer they couldn’t bring an outside birthday cake unless it was proven to also be 100% British.
He does, however, have one exception in the form of tonic water since quinine cannot be grown in Britain.
Elsewhere, he’s left customers concerned as his £95 boozy advent calendar under his Hawkstone brand has faced various delivery delays – not ideal with December 1 just around the corner.
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