Nike v. Kasky, the commercial free speech case, will be argued before the Supreme Court Wednesday. Here, via SCOTUS Blog, are links to everything you could possibly want to read about the case, including many many briefs.
Dave and Doc lobby Google to introduce a “date of first use on the Web” feature. I second that. That would be immediately useful in trademark work, where timing sometimes is everything. It wouldn’t be authoritative because of the unknown unknown “dark web” in the past (uncached web pages), but still it would be helpful.
This will be interesting. Madonna has reportedly uploaded “decoy” files to peer-to-peer networks, in order to discourage piracy. Users who believe that they are downloading Madonna’s new album receive instead a recorded admonition from Madonna herself advising the user to respect the copyright in her work (not precisely in those words).
When the record
Plasticbag.org rebutting arguments that search engines will reduce the importance of domain names. Many accurate observations, but, in my view, they better support the argument that search engines will not decrease the importance of brands.
An attentive reader, inspired by the Spaldeen piece below on protectable rights in a public’s nickname for a product, forwards this pertinent story from winebusiness.com. A $1.99 wine by Bronco Wine named Charles Shaw is popularly known as TWO BUCK CHUCK. A third-party has now come out with its own TWO BUCK CHUCK wine. Now all
How one man made art of Google AdWords.
When read quickly, the first paragraph of this article:
“The Oakland Raiders have asked a judge to prevent the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers from wearing their uniforms for games in California because they violate the Raiders’ trademark rights.”
suggests an absurd image.
Spalding has announced that it will sell its non-golf business to Russell Athletic. This article says that the sale will include ownership of the SPALDING name for those sporting goods, making SPALDING one of the better known split-ownership marks.
The article does not mention the SPALDEEN mark. If you grew up in New York City, then
TechLawAdvisor’s explanation as to why Sony dropped the SHOCK AND AWE game is dubious.
