Could Mindich have worked a deal to park WFNX on a boat somewhere?

[Sid Schweiger]

"I don't think the relevant authorities much care about an administrative callsign assignment from the FCC. If Mindich holds the "WFNX" trademark and is actively using it on wfnx.com, nobody's going to take that domain away from him."

I went through this some years ago in a previous job, and with the customary IANAL disclaimer in mind:  we were told by counsel that you can't trademark any government-issued identifier.  You can register call signs as service marks, but as I understand it the degree of protection from other potential users is less.

Of course, that was many years before Internet usage became an issue, so it may be very different now.