July 2004

The 2d Circuit frowns on the idea of awarding monetary damages under ACPA to domain names registered prior to ACPA’s enactment in 1999.  Note: the defendant in this case is not related to me and spells his last name differently.

Vermont Teddy Bear Company v. Schwimer, 03-7030 (2d Cir July 1 2004).

SCO, scourge of the LINUX world, has filed a trademark application for UNIX SYSTEMS LABORATORIES, which had been a registered mark belonging to, oddly enough, Unix System Laboratories.  As far as I can tell, the registration went from USL to Novell to X/Open, which let the thing lapse in 2000.

The folks at Slashdot and

Via Chris Rush Cohen, a political satire of THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND here.

Via CopyFight, an iPOD satire here.

Things to think about.  What percentage of the original work is copied?  Is the ‘target’ of the satire/parody the original work, or some other topic?  Does the satire/parody compete with the original work? 

Google takes one on the chin. It loses a UDRP against FROOGLES.COM, which was registered in 2001 (prior to FROOGLE, but certainly after GOOGLE). Decision here.