If you happen to invent something like a new grape, and have to name it, choose a term that describes it. If you would rather pick a catchy name that suggests an attribute, then you ought to do a name search. Here is the February 20 press release from Cornell announcing its creation of the
Today’s NY Times features an article about USA Interactive’s CitySearch network instituting paid keyword searching at the local level. The question of competition with global search engine arises. The article gives the example that someone can put in “laser surgery” on the Atlanta site. But right now I can “Google” “Atlanta laser surgery” and get
I don’t have the sitzfleisch to weigh in on the question as to whether “Governments own a part of the domain name system as a matter of international law,” but ICANNWATCH, which believes this theory is “unprecedented and unsupported,” does. This is part of a larger article predicting that Paul Twomey, an Australian politician, will
Slashdot announced the debut of ROOGLE, a search engine for RSS feeds and worried out loud “Let us hope it does not get in trouble because of its name.” Given Google’s use of FROOGLE as well as GOOGLE, it can plausibly claim an OOGLE family, and Slashdot was right to worry but apparently behind
Time on their hands. The Counsel to the Vice President (of the U.S.) wrote a demand letter to the operator of whitehouse.org asking that it remove this fictitious bio of the VP’s wife, this letter to the folks at whitehouse.org for running this fictictious bio of Mrs. Cheney. Some might view the fake bio
The street.com on what was dumb about the Victor’s Secret case.
. . . the lovely Denise has compiled a list of all the information on blogging imaginable.
Not trademark law, but the law as to what extent a fictional character may be based on a real person is always of interest. A non-fiction book portrayed, in part, plaintiff. The book was sold to Paramount, which produced “Hardball.” Keanu Reeves plays the part of a character who appears to be based on plaintiff,
John Vella played for the 1976 Super Bowl Champion Oakland Raiders. Now he owns sporting good stores and has a website. Here is some imagery from his website at raiderlockerroom.com:
Terri Welles used to be Playmate of the Year. Here is some imagery from her website at terriwelles.com.
The NFL has now sued Vella for
Apparently Mr. Rogers gave key testimony in Sony v. Universal, the Supreme Court case which cleared the way for home taping. The story of the testimony is here, via The New York Lawyer. Good quote:
My whole approach in broadcasting has always been “You are an important person just the way you are. You can