Remember when Paris Hilton got flak for her trademark on the phrase "That's hot"?

It seemed to me this morning that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did the same thing with the phrase "family search." That's such a unique phrase, you know, people might get confused between two businesses who both offer "family search," or so the argument goes.

For seven years the church saw fit to fight this court fight. According to the guy the church sued,

These words we have been arguing about are among the top 2% of commonly used words in the English language. They (the LDS Church) just have an endless supply of other people’s money, which they then go and waste in the pursuing and corralling of common words.

However, if you take the church's spokesman at his word, it was the businessman who filed a new trademark on "family serach." Since the church operates familysearch.org , they were understandably concerned. Or is this a PR smoke screen?

Was the church the bully? Were they just protecting themselves? PR people at the church, and possibly this other businessman, know full well that without access to the court filings none of us back in Zion or elsewhere will be able to make a firm conclusion so they are more or less free to say whatever they want. So it's hard to say, but if you spend seven years in litigation over "family search," many people will conclude someone was acting like an ass.