Just weeks after the SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, a company best known for profiting wildly off of fantasy stories for children has trademarked Seal Team 6.
The Walt Disney Company has trademarked “Seal Team 6,” which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that killed Osama Bin Laden.
The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6″ was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation.
There’s a lot that’s wrong with this. Do we really need Mickey Mouse making a movie celebrating violence? Boom, boom! as Mickey double-taps the bad guy.
And how does Disney get to trademark a government unit? Shouldn’t they be paying a license fee to the government if they want to make money off Seal Team 6’s success?
Finally, though, I’d love to second the suggestion made by @AllThingsCT: if Disney is going to insist on profiting off the exploits of SEAL Team 6, then they had better be giving most of those profits back, preferably to military families who are struggling through multiple deployments and PTSD.