2003

Metal wire was invented in approximately 400 AD.  Barbed wire was invented in the 1870’s.  Plaintiff began selling barbed wire in 1889.  It began coloring the top wire strand red in 1920 (and received a trademark registration for red top wire fencing in 1921).  Its KING RANCH wire is pictured above.  Defendants began selling green

More here on the long and tortuous history of the various Russian vodka trademarks such as MOSKOVSKAYA and STOLICHNAYA (some background here and  here and don’t forget Moscow Distillery Cristall v. Pepsico, 4 USPQ2d 1217 (1998)).

I’m sure that blurb will make it to the back of the paperback edition of “Pattern Recognition,” the new novel by William Gibson, author of Neuromancer.  The main character is a marketing consultant allergic to trademarks.  Really.

Today’s Wall Street Journal’s lead article discusses the cat-and-mouse game between Google and those who seek to “game” Google in order to boost their rankings.  Of interest is the discussion of the lawsuit brought by SearchKing against Google regarding Google’s tweaking of its search algorithm (and the resulting bad effects on SearchKing’s methods).  In that