Meghan Markle wants to trademark a common English word because her first podcasts for Spotify will use that word, “Archetypes,” as their title.
Last month, Markle filed an application at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The Daily Mail reported what the application covered:
The dizzying list of goods and services involved are “in the fields of cultural treatment of women and stereotypes facing women.” They include everything from podcasts, television programmes, DVDs, CDs and entertainment services distributed through satellite and cable TV, global computer networks, the internet, wireless devices, mobile applications, set-top boxes, webcasts and streaming media.
If Markle’s application is approved, she would own the trademark rather than Spotify. “Markle could face legal challenges from companies that use the word in their names – such as skincare and cleaning products business Archetypes, which already established a trademark,” NZ Herald reported.
The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the word “archetype” was first coined in the English language in 1540.
Markle states in a trailer for the Archewell Audio project:
This is how we talk about women: the words that raise our girls, and how the media reflects women back to us. … But where do these stereotypes come from? And how do they keep showing up and defining our lives? I’m Meghan and this is Archetypes – the podcast where we dissect, explore and subvert the labels that try to hold women back. I’ll have conversations with women who know all too well how these typecasts shape our narratives. And I’ll talk to historians to understand how we even got here in the first place.
Markle has done her own work creating her own narrative; in her March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Markle likened herself to Disney’s “Little Mermaid,” claiming that in a similar fashion to the cartoon character, she had been silenced but through the interview with Winfrey, she “got her voice back.”
As Buzzfeed News reported, Markle told Winfrey, “I was sitting in Nottingham Cottage, and ‘The Little Mermaid’ came on. And who as an adult really watches ‘The Little Mermaid’? But it came on, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m just here all the time so may as well watch this.’ And I went, ‘Oh, my God, she falls in love with a prince, and because of that she has to lose her voice.’”
Winfrey, responded by murmuring, “Mmmm.”
Markle added, raising her finger, “But by the end, she gets her voice back.”
Winfrey repeated, “She gets her voice back. And this is what happened here. You feel like you got your voice back.”
“Yeah,” said Markle.