Via cnn.com: The estate of fashion photographer Guy Bourdin is suing Madonna for her use of images inspired by those of the photographer, in her recent music video.  A side-by-side comparison of frames from the video and those taken by the photographer are here.

Interesting piece from Dave Winer entitled “The Rule of Links.”  I think that he uses ‘must’ when I would use ‘should,’ but I agree with one of his central tenets, which is that if you are discussing a source that is available on the Web, it is disrespectful to your reader not to…

Verisign has been sued by a domain name registrant for $3 million in damages allegedly resulting from Verisign’s ‘dropping’ of the domain name. This is the first suit against Verisign since the Ninth Circuit held in the sex.com case that  the negligent handling of a domain name registration was a colorable claim.

The owners of several buildings in Times Square had sued Sony Picutres because the movie SPIDER-MAN had contained digital renderings of those buildings altered to show different ads on the billboards than those found in real-life (presumably depriving the building owner and those advertisers of additional revenue).  The district court dismissed the trademark claim on…

John Welch tipped me off to the PTO’s unveiling of TTABVue, a system for viewing scanned-in TTAB documents filed since January of this year.

According to this WIPO press release, starting on April 1, 2004, applicants will be able to file for international trademark regsitrations in Spanish.

According to the NY Times account of jury selection in the Dennis Kozlowski trial, the judge said “This is not about the toy company of a similar name.”

Home of Tyco RC here.

Mr. Krabs zealously guards the secret of his secret sauce in his krabby pattys, which he sells in his restaurant, The Krusty Krab.  Plankton seeks to steal the recipe for his rival restaurant, The Chum Bucket.  Mr. Krabs observes an important tenet of trade secrets, in that he maintains the confidentiality of the…