This NY Times article discusses product placement in movies, including the exchange from Million Dollar Baby about bleach being bleach, a discussion prompted no doubt by this 1967 Supreme Court decision ordering Procter & Gamble to divest itself of the then recently-acquired Clorox Company.
Others brands in recent movies include the Sanford Winery and Hai Karate
Model does two hour photo shoot in 1986. Nestle doesn’t tell him that it put the picture on the TASTER’S CHOICE jar. He sees the jar for the first time in 2002. Sues. Gets awarded $15.6 million dollars.
Update: Scott Whiteleather writes ” . . . it is interesting to see an award like
Tech Law Advisor on what might be a paid attempt to verbify the A9 trademark. ‘A9’ed’ has a chance but I don’t think ‘A9.com’ed’ will become street slang soon.
When I began practicing trademark law there was no TESS, TARR, eTEAS and no quick way to look at file wrappers. It sucked.
Thank you Trademark Office.
The Trademark Office is now making file wrappers (the trademark application file) available online.
Here’s the link.
It’s pretty impressive.
Excellent article: ‘Deregulating Relevancy in Internet Trademark Law’ by Professor Eric Goldman. A must read in analyzing the sale of keywords.
Seattle University is presenting its Advertising Law Conference April 15. Speakers from, among others, Nike, Microsoft, Nintendo, Hasbro, Expedia, Perkins Coie and Graham Dunn, will discuss corporate speech, spam and ‘stealth advertising.’ I will be participating on a panel on targeted advertising.
Brochure here.
Amazon’s A9 search engine is rolling out a visual yellow pages, providing phoos of the busiensses listed. This may have some effect in reducing consumer fraud, but also removes a primary advantage of the Internet, which is that nobody knows you’re a dog.
Interesting article by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker primarily about the Vioxx matter and tort law, but also contains an insight about the branding of pharmaceutical drugs and its unintended consequences.