Blogging was disrupted as Schwimmerlegal moved its entire legal staff to Mt. Pleasant, NY (right next to Armonk).  A tip of the hat to Benjamin and Ed and the guys at Value Electronics (see valueelectronics.com) for installing the satellite dish that brings this blog to you.  We now resume regular programming.

No criminal liability of wholesaler for printing trademark on re-packaged goods, via law.com.

A doctrine which has populist appeal and found itself codified somewhat in the UDRP, but which has NOT been trademark case law since Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes blue-penciled it approximately 90 years ago, is “the sacred right to use one’s own name.”  If your name is Giorgio Armani, and you are not that Giorgio Armani…

Habanero and Scotch Bonnet are generic names for hot peppers, TABASCO is a brand name.  The folk at McIllhenny have developed a strong trade dress for TABASCO, consisting in part of a white diamond on a red background,  It has licensed that trade dress for a variety of products.  So when someone brought out a…

Good collection of links from Slashdot on various copyright matters here.

Be Back Soon!

Here is the text of Lawrence Lessig’s recent speech on copyright and patent terms.  I hadn’t known that Mickey Mouse’s first animated film “Steamboat Willie” was a parody of a Buster Keaton film of the time, ‘Steamboat Bill.’

Regardless of how Eldred turns out, at some point the valuable properties of the 20th Centruy will…

I will report without comment this article from The Times of India, which contains the sentence “the arrival of the “brand” in the past century has prompted brain evolution.”  That scary thought aside, the article refers to the on-going research into the scientific basis for brand-positioning and the two key concepts of trademark law,…