The Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League were found to have infringed the copyright of a logo designer named Beuchat, in coming up with a new logo (affirmed by the Fourth Circuit back in 2000).  The damages trial has now concluded and the jury came back with zero damages (decision not yet posted…

Two news items on the same day with similar fact patterns.  The NCAA sued Coors and the Redskins sued the Journal Newspapers, for giving away tickets in promotional sweepstakes, alleging trademark infringement and other causes.  

I’m sorry there have been no blog items since Thursday but I was involved in something very important.  Musa al-Mustapha of Nigeria emailed me.  It’s really a sad story about how his father received $18 million from former dictator General Sani Abacha, but then the father died, and you know those court systems!!  One thing…

Here is a Washington Post article on a request by domain name registries Verisign, Nominet and DeNic, approaching DoC to reign in ICANN.  One of the things that’s bugging Verisign these days is that ICANN is commenting on how much Verisign intends to charge for its Wait List Service (I’m now on the Transfer Task…

What’s a TLD without a dispute resolution procedure.  The first USDRP decision (right, the dispute resolution procedure for the .US TLD) has been handed down.  CDW prevailed over the registrant of cdw.us, who didn’t show up.  The first 8 filed USDRPs are listed here. 

I happen to know that a big-wig at Neustar…

A Danish Band, Aqua, released a song named “Barbie Girl,” the lyrics of which would likely have been forgotten, but now, thanks to this lawsuit, will be reprinted in F.3d.  The characters in the song are named Barbie and Ken and the chorus is:

I’m a Barbie Girl, in my Barbie world, Life in plastic…

The Ninth Circuit in Mattel, noting that song titles tend not to be perceived as designating origin, finds that “. . . upon hearing Janis Joplin croon ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?’ would we suspect that she and the carmaker had entered into a joint venture.”  Sure, baby boomers aware of…

Until today I have never laughed out loud  while reading a Ninth Circuit Opinion.  This is the last paragraph of Mattel v. MCA (discussed above):

“MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative’s use of the words “bank robber,” “heist,” “crime” and “theft.”  But all of these are variants of the invective…