Tarzan yelling declared a fundamental right

Want to yell like Tarzan? Go ahead, says the EU which says it cannot be trademarked.

The literary estate of Tarzan creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, wanted to register the yell as a trademark.

They said a fortune could be made from ringtones, advertising and computer games from the roar - made famous by Hollywood actor Johnny Weismuller.



But the EU trademark authority has ruled that although it is possible to protect sounds that can be represented by musical notes, Tarzan's cry does not qualify.

Experts dismissed a spectogram - or sound graph - which claimed to show the cry had five distinct stages.

In a statement, the EU's Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market said: 'It is impossible to recognise from the image as filed whether the sound phenomena depicted therein is a human voice or something else – eg the tune of violins or bells or a dog's bark. Nobody would be able to hum the Tarzan yell from the spectrogram.'