This Slashdot article on MOZILLA branding made me ponder the trademark ramifications of open source licensing, which led me to Dennis Kennedy’s excellent open source law site.
Laugh and the World Laughs With You
Charles Douglass, inventor of the Laugh Track, has died at the age of 93. Here is an article from sciencenews.org reporting an experiment that laugh tracks didn’t affect an audience watching The Simpsons (perhaps becuase that show is actually funny). Those results somewhat contradict this study on canned laughter here where canned laughter increased
Grokster Triumphant
Important case from the Central District of California regarding direct, contributory and/or vicarious liability of peer-to-peer networks. Big win for P2P. Ramifications for record industry spoofers.
Coverage here at the Times, here at Slashdot, and here at Siliconvalley.com.
Further rumination: If these networks are legal, and they are competitors of the record companies’
OECD on ccTLDs
OECD on ccTLD Administration, including review of trademark and whois policies.
VOLVOCARS.COM v. VOLOCARS.COM
If you only read Dave Farber’s list, or this news article or this press release from registrant, then you might agree with the comments that Volvo’s complaint against the Volo Auto Museum of Volo, Illinois does sound like one more of those David/Goliath misguided things. However, you wouldn’t know which domain names were involved.
Steve Jobs Gets It
The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal has “As Apple Stalls, Steve Jobs Looks to Digital Entertainment” which gives some credence to the view that in the end, the computer hardware business will save the recorded music business. But, to show you my skewed view of the world, here is the part that caught
Bubble as a Paid Search Term
Marketwatch on the ‘bubble’ in search stocks such as Overture and Ask Jeeves (registration is required after the story is 24 hours old). In addition to the reasons specified in the article why these stocks are perhaps over-priced, there is another one: legal uncertainty. If keyword sales helps a company sell binoculars more efficently to people
Attention International Trademark Metasearch Users
So you will notice two things about the metasearch. The first is that Canada is not working. That is Canada’s fault. Second, we are starting a registration process. The first time you log onto the metasearch or the domain dossier you will be asked to supply an email address. It has to be a real
Allow Me to Describe the Frame of My Template
Some unknown number of you are reading the Blog using aggregators and may or may not have visited the Website itself. If not, you are missing out on nifty features we have used to decorate the from-the-factory Userland template.
Starting from the lower left, above the Creative Commons license, is a link to ccTLD reference information.
Brand As Navigator – WSJ Compares the Search Engines
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The Wall Street Journal’s Cranky Consumer column (Page D2 today, no link) compared search engines on various tasks – finding a specific product, finding a local business, etc. Recommendations – Froogle for finding the radio, AOL’s yellow page service for zip-code based searching of local businesses. Singled out for criticism – MSN, for being