Coca-Cola, Pepsi, the Washington Post and McDonalds moved for a TRO and Preliminary Injunction against William Purdy, an anti-abortion activits, who registered various domain names incorporating plaintiffs’ names, pointing them to anti-abortion information (including fund-raising information).  See July 16 entry below for more background.  Now plaintiffs have been granted the TRO and the injunction and…

See this cnn.com story.

New organizations have come out in favor of spam, via The Onion. [irony indicator on].

Check out this picture of a gas station sign.  The station owner, oddly, sells SHELL gas AND its own brand (somewhat unusual).  In addition to the franchisor/franchisee issues discussed in the law.com article, what we may have here possibly is a rare real-world case of Initial Interest Confusion, where the copying of a mark…

Everything about linking from Searchenginewatch.com via Politech.

Politechbot via ICANNwatch on the case of William Purdy and what looks to be another domain name as free speech case. An anti-abortion advocate is apparently registering what are described as names similar or identical to the names of newspapers.  The registrant re-directs traffic to anti-abortion sites.

I disagree with the author’s final sentence, that…

This from the Washington Post about two groups fighting over the name Minority Business RoundTable.  Trademark disputes are not limited to for-profit enterprises.

From cnn.com via slashdot.org re: paid search engines’ tardiness in complying with the FTC order in revealing how payment affects search placement.