In a cheap media ploy that obviously worked, a German liquor company applied for a trademark for a brand of schnapps they wanted to call “Fuck.” Their initial efforts were stymied by authorities–but now, a German high court has ruled in their favor in the most important free-speech battle since the one fought over Ulysses.
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Der Spiegel, that wonderful chronicler of all things wacky and German, has the full story. It turned out that the German Patent and Trademark Office had initially rejected the efforts of Ficken's parent company, EFAG Trade Mark Company(editor's note: um, yeah on that acronym…), for the obvious prudish reasons, but that the country's Federal Patent Court found in EFAG's favor, arguing many important pieces of work, like the great play Shopping and Fucking, include variants of “fuck.”
But the most shocking find of all, besides that horrible promotional picture shown above? There is a town in Austria called Fucking. Those wacky Teutons! Get your Fuck Schnapps here.
