Meghan Markle‘s latest business venture has her attempting to file a trademark for the word ‘archetypes’, the title of her new Spotify podcast.
Per The Brag, last month, Markle’s legal team submitted an application for the trademark to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The request was made shortly after she announced the upcoming launch of the Archetypes podcast.
A savvy entrepreneur with access to top-tier legal advice, Markle is seeking to secure the trademark for Archetypes in order to protect the brand she is building with her spouse, Prince Harry. She has previously stated that her podcast will focus on gender equality.
The Archetypes podcast has moved from development to production and is scheduled to premiere this summer. Markle revealed in the trailer for the podcast:
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.
An outspoken feminist, Markle is not one to shy away from controversial discussions about women’s equality, which has sometimes led to tensions between the Archewell co-founder and media publications with a more traditional bent.
A graduate of Northwestern’s School of Communication, Markle has a keen awareness of the ways language can influence attitudes. Her passion for gender equality seems to come from her personal experience of how people’s biases can obstruct progress and divide communities.
She expounded on this theme in the trailer for Archetypes:
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?
The trademark application may seem peculiar to some as the word archetypes has been used in common parlance since the 1540s. However, trademarks serve a number of essential functions for brands. Among them, they provide consumer assurance and help distinguish a business from its competitors. According to Forbes, when a trademark is granted, It usually takes a minimum of one year for the USPTO to review and process the application. Once approved, a trademark lasts for a ten-year period.
Should the application be successful, the trademark for Archetypes will belong exclusively to Archewell Inc., not Spotify.
