43(B)log: “5 Hour Power struck unfair blow against alleged infringer 6 hour.” Interesting fact pattern. Defendant received injunction against one competitor using a certain term, and issued a press release that falsely suggested that it had received a court order against all competitors using that term, subjecting plaintiff to lost sales.

Wired: “Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.“:

Monday’s naming of Ian Gershengorn, to become the department’s deputy assistant attorney of the Civil Division, comes more than a week after nearly two-dozen public interest groups, trade pacts and library coalitions urged the new president to quit filling his administration with lawyers plucked from the Recording Industry Association of America.

From Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post American World“:

Western businessmen have often noted that their Chinese counterparts seem to place less stock in rules, laws and contracts. Their sense of ethics is more situational. . . . Social relations and trust are far more important than paper commitments. Microsoft could not get Beijing to enforce its IP laws for years – until the company spent time and effort developing a relationship with the government . . . Once Microsoft had convinced the Chinese government of its benign intentions, those same laws began to get enforced.”

nite owl coffee.jpg
Chock Full Of Nuts is the heavenly coffee, better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy. Nite Owl is a character from the WATCHMEN movie. Defendant came out with Nite Owl Coffee, apparently as merchandising related to the movie.
First aside: I speculate that the (registered) checkerboard design on the CFON label alludes to the ‘checker cabs‘ that were popular in New York in days gone by.
Second aside: Read paragraph 32 of the complaint and ask yourself if you would have put that allegation quite that way.
Third aside: Nite Owl coffee doesn’t seem to be on defendant’s website.
Complaint Nite Owl Coffee

WSJ: The Scariest Monster of All Sues for Trademark Infringement“:

When Christina and Patrick Vitagliano dreamed up their Monster Mini Golf franchises — 18-hole, indoor putting greens straddled by glow-in-the-dark statues of ghouls and gargoyles — they never imagined that a California maker of high-end audio cables would object.
But Monster Cable Products Inc., which holds more than 70 trademarks on the word monster, challenged the Vitaglianos’ trademark applications. It filed a federal lawsuit against their company in California and demanded the Rhode Island couple surrender the name and pay at least $80,000 for the right to use it.

If you thought, from the headline, that this was about Monster, the employment listings company, it isn’t.