‘To protect the movement’: Greta Thunberg wants to trademark her name, set up a foundation

Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says she’s had it with ‘impostors’ and marketers, and is moving to trademark her own name as well as that of her movement – purely for noble and altruistic purposes, of course.

Thunberg announced the move to in an Instagram post on Wednesday, urging her 500,000-plus followers to be “extremely suspicious” if someone pretending to be her contacts them, as many impersonators and frauds have tried using her name “in order to communicate with high profile people, politicians, media, artists etc.”

In addition to applying for a trademark in her own name, Thunberg is seeking to protect the ‘Fridays For Future’ and ‘Skolstrejk för klimatet,’ the Swedish name of her “climate strike” movement, in order to put a stop to advertising and fundraising by unrelated third parties.

Fridays For Future is a global movement founded by me. It belongs to anyone taking part in it, above all the young people. It can – and must – not be used for individual or commercial purposes.

A foundation recently registered by her parents, though not up and running quite yet, will be “strictly nonprofit of course and there are no interests in philanthropy,” she added. “It is just something that is needed for handling money (book royalties, donations, prize money etc) in a completely transparent way.”

She then contradicted herself, adding that the foundation’s goals will be to “promote ecological, climatic and social sustainability as well as mental health.”  

Thunberg, now 17, was named TIME magazine’s person of the year in 2019 and garnered worldwide attention after starting a Friday school boycott to protest climate change in August 2018. A recently announced documentary, however, suggested that her sudden rise to fame may have been less organic and more carefully scripted by climate activist Ingmar Rentzhog, a friend of her parents.

Earlier this month, a Facebook glitch revealed that none of the posts on Thunberg’s page were actually published by the teenager herself, but by her father Svante and Indian climate activist Adarsh Prathap instead. 

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