2002

I thought link-blocking software was going to make these disputes go away, but the Danish newspaper guild is one of several entities accusing linkers of trademark infringement (and, more plausibly, unfair competition).  In 1998 I wrote a paper entitled “Dismantling the Web With Trademark and Copyright Law.”  The hypothesis was that the Web was anti-thetical…

This news story reports an Austrian supreme court decision stripping Sony of its trademark and holding that WALKMAN is generic for hand-held portable tape-players.  The text of the decision is not yet available.

Question for discusion:  If WALKMAN is generic in Austria, can I assemble them in Austria ans sell them into the rest of…

Registrant registered ralphlaurensheets.com and ralphlaurensheets.net.  It warehoused the names.  It did not respond to demand letters.  It did not respond to the UDRP.  And this panelist found that bad faith was not shown.  This decision shows as much as anything else how screwed up the UDRP is. 

There’s an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today about the town of Parma, Italy, home of not only Parma ham but Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese as well (also known as Parmesan cheese).  The ham consortium of Parma is involved in a dispute with Asda, a British supermarket chain, over the use of appellations…

Don’t let this happen to you.  This Northern District of New York case doesn’t really represent new law but it illustrates that “Creeping Equities” is still a common problem which can befall a strong mark in a narrow field.  Plainitff had used TYCOS on sphygmomanometers and stethoscopes since 1909.  Defendant, one of the world’s larger…

Ben Edelman (a Harvard senior!!) has released another behaviorial report, this time on .name, available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/name-restrictions/.  He came up with 6000 names that violated the eligibility rules, such as, well, harvard.university.name and allergy.tylenolallergysinus.name.  GNR, the .name registry, receives approximately $11 for each registration, valid or not. 

The State of the Domain Name report…

You can guess from the caption that it’s about trademarks.   A Ninth Circuit case to cite when attempting to overcome a geographically misdescriptive objection: JAPAN TELECOM may not necessarily refer to Japan, but to the business’ Japanese-speaking customers.