‘Not ancient’<\/p>\n
Registering a trademark allows people or businesses legally protect their ideas or brand from being used without permission.<\/p>\n
It also allows them to put a registered trademark symbol on their products to show ownership and warn others not to copy or use it.<\/p>\n
The move by Ken Dodd’s team follows other recognisable names in the public eye, including St Helens-born darts player Luke Littler who last month attempted to trademark his face<\/a>.<\/p>\n The move is intended to prevent his face being reproduced, including by generative AI, without permission.<\/p>\n Lady Anne said her late husband was still performing within the last three months of his life.<\/p>\n “It’s not that long since he was performing to full houses. So there are still people around and it’s not as though it’s ancient.<\/p>\n “It’s still very recent so [a trademark would] sort of keep it in the eye,” she said.<\/p>\n Dodd was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to entertainment and charity [PA Media]<\/p>\n Lady Anne was named a Citizen of Honour by Liverpool City Council in January last year for her charitable work and contributions to the city.<\/p>\n Her late husband also held numerous titles, including a knighthood in 2017<\/a> and a Guinness World Record – after he told a record 1,500 jokes in a near four hour session at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool.<\/p>\n Lady Anne admitted it was hard whittling the breadth of her late husband’s catchphrases to just 25 but added Knotty Ash, both a suburb of Liverpool and mythical home of his ‘Diddymen’, could not make the list despite it reaching some unusually high up places.<\/p>\n She recalled an anecdote from Prince Charles who once asked a group of women on a tour of Balmoral where they were from.<\/p>\n “They replied ‘Knotty Ash’, and he said ‘Oh I thought that was a figment of Ken Dodd’s imagination!'”.<\/p>\n “You can’t really trademark it because it already exists but in a way he brought it to the national knowledge, as it were.”<\/p>\n Aside from catchphrases, Lady Anne said Dodd had been remembered in other ways – notable the gardens of the Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, Merseyside which was funded by the Dodd estate.<\/p>\n A mosaic of Ken Dodd is also being made at the site, which will be a “more permanent” stamp of his legacy on the performing arts across both the North West and Britain as a whole, she said.<\/p>\n Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds<\/a> and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook<\/a>, X<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.<\/p>\n![\"Dodd](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/70fbe44afe042aeae092937440ff27a6.jpeg\"\/)
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