August 24th 2009
Twitter’s laissez-faire approach to trademark enforcement may prove to be a liability after all. Numerous firms have set up services using the Twitter mark: Twitterific, Tiny Twitter, Twitterberry, MadTwitter, TwitterFone, Twitterholic, Twitter Karma, TwitterBuzz, Twitterdex, Twitterlocal, TwitterPoster, TwitterCounter. There’s no sign that Twitter has defended against such use. Even their API agreement fails to lay […]
August 15th 2009
Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law blog recounts a hysterically misguided ruling in Colorado, which holds a hospital liable for trademark and copyright infringement because they mention the ranking they received from a health quality website. You can’t copyright a number Imagine enjoining rock bands from saying Billboard ranked them #1, because that […]
June 25th 2009
The Republican Governors’ Association has launched an attack website against Democrat New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. The site, called the Corzine Times, is formatted to resemble the New York Times. The grey lady has sent a cease and desist letter to the Republican governors. The demand letter claims trademark infringement, claiming that similar logos and formats […]
June 16th 2009
Capgemini and the “Big Reveal” Professional services is a staple of airport advertising. But having seen this one at least one thousand times I still don’t understand how it sells Capgemini. Is the blue-suited lady the consultant, and is she inspiring her clients to disrobe? Or are the super hero-suited businessmen the consultants, and she’s […]
May 14th 2009
There are a lot of situations where allegations of trademark infringement are counter productive. As you’ve read here, overly aggressive enforcement can lead to unexpected, damaging, consequences for brands. Deutsche Telekom: threatened a tech blog for using magenta headlines, the color they reserved for tMobile. Monster Cable: the litigious audio wire vendor has threatend baseball […]
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 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 3rd 2009
Do you know what the domain is for Google Books? Those who’d guess the obvious, www.GoogleBooks.com, would unfortunately be wrong. Instead of finding the real Google Books, they’d arrive at a domain squatter selling tools for joining them in that business and using a Google’s good name in their domain to take revenue from Adwords and […]
March 30th 2009
Siding with the American Civil Liberties Union, Judge James M. Munley has barred the Wyoming County District Attorney from pursuing threatened felony charges against teenage girls he has accused of sending explicit photographs over their cell phones. The controversial case over so-called “sexting” was filed by the ACLU, along with the parents of three girls, […]
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