Look what you made her do: T-Swift in new TM blitz

Taylor Swift has filed a slew of new trademark registrations ahead of her impending fifth concert tour.

The US superstar, who is selling the first batch of tickets via Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan rewards programme, is expected to hit the road again next year in support of upcoming album Reputation (pictured). Swift’s last tour, the 1989 world tour, grossed more than US$250 million between May and December 2015, according to promoter AEG/Messina Touring Group.

New United States Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) trademark/servicemark applications by Swift’s Nashville-based TAS Rights Management company include character marks for “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO” and “THE OLD TAYLOR CAN’T COME TO THE PHONE RIGHT NOW” – both phrases from her record-breaking new single, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ – and the word “REPUTATION” itself.

All applications apply to a range of tour-ready merchandise, including men’s and women’s clothing, accessories, jewellery, stationery, homewares, beach towels, guitar plectra and more.

Swift embarked on a similar run of new registrations in advance of the 1989 tour, applying for some 37 new marks, in what one trademark lawyer called the singer “marking her territory”.

Kiss frontman Gene Simmons in June abandoned a USPTO application to trademark the devil’s horns gesture – specifically “a hand gesture with the index and small fingers extended upward and the thumb extended perpendicular” – for use in concerts.

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