May 5th 2009
Technology and ambition fills our lives. As parents, professionals, friends and members of gyms, the edict to “Be All You Can Be” is a self-escalating puzzle. Simplicity and transparency have emerged as important brand promises in promoting political candidates, financial services, packaged goods and foods, and technology. It is easy to recall recent cases in […]
May 1st 2009
In a win for both fair use advocates and brand holders, the Fifth Circuit has interpreted the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), and the duty of trial courts to carefully consider fair use and irreparable harm issues when ruling on a request for injunctive relief. See Southern Co. v. Dauben Inc. The […]
April 30th 2009
For the second consecutive day, Facebook has been attacked by phishing scams. Unsuspecting Facebook users get a message from a friend urging them to “check this out” and including a link to a Web page that appears to be a Facebook log-in page. It is, however, a fake site which steals their log-in credentials, and […]
April 30th 2009
Note to self: five things not to do on social media. Never make a public Facebook group called: “Make-it-Rain Foundation for Underprivileged Hoes,“ especially if you’re a cop in DC. Don’t Twitter plans for a massacre. Twitter crosses state lines, as does the FBI. Don’t post collections notices on people’s kids’ MySpace pages, even if […]
April 29th 2009
We’ve previously blogged about crime on Craigslist. This post is about something different: retribution. Allow me to confirm what you may already know: When newspapers consider what’s happened to their business model and who is responsible, the first name that comes to mind is often Craigslist. Craigslist Decimated Print Budgets by Giving Away Classifieds Newspapers used […]
April 28th 2009
Recently, the people over at Wikipedia.org have had a bee in their bonnet about a site called WikipediaArt.org. Wikipedia doesn’t like this other site using its name in their domain name, and is threatening to pursue legal action against WikipediaArt.org for trademark infringement. According to WikipediaArt.org: This web site documents performance art work that promotes […]
April 27th 2009
I’m thrilled to be heading to Chicago in June speak at the Business Marketing Association’s Annual Meeting. As you can see, the conference theme is to un-learn and empower brands to better adapt to the dramatically changing world of B-to-B marketing. The “dynamic personalization” dream team Last fall I was part of a really fun […]
April 14th 2009
According to Canada’s last census, there are more than 7.5 million residents in Quebec. Perhaps some of them would like to do business with you. But there’s a hurdle. The French language. In 1977, the National Assembly of the Province of Quebec adopted the Charter of the French Language. In short, it sets a rule […]
April 13th 2009
While domain squatting is on the increase, so is enforcement. Brands are using research to determine which variants of their domains merit defensive registration, and since all variants can be predicted, they are invoking litigation and arbitration to take control of infringing marks. Lego already owns 450 domain names, and they’ve registered their mark in […]
April 10th 2009
The Associated Press plans to go after news aggregators legally and through legislation (whatever that means) who ‘take’ AP headlines and related content. Despite the obvious arguments of Fair Use and the fact that aggregators drive traffic to AP affiliated newspapers or even to the AP itself, AP Board Chairmen Dean Singleton sees it very […]
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