Seventh Circuit: U.S. Copyright Law does not preempt Illinois’ Right of Publicity Act. The right to control the commercial exploitation of one’s identity is separate from the right to protect one particular fixation of one’s likeness in, for example, a photograph.
Toney v. L’Oreal, 03-2184 (7th Cir. May 6, 2005).
Answer to the Nike v. Nikepal ‘Test Your Skills’ fact pattern here via TTABlog.
iRobot sues Canadian firm for copyright and patent infringement relating to the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. Via Boston Business Journal. First three Laws Of Robotics discussed here.
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Yale’s LV Sidewalk discussed here by LawMeme.
Google aparently went down for about 15 minutes over the weekend and it’s not precisely clear what happened. A spokesman said that Google had trouble with its domain name server.
Would you clear NIKEPAL for ‘Import and export agencies and wholesale distributorships featuring scientific, chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology testing instruments and glassware for laboratory uses, electrical instruments, paper products and household products and cooking appliances,’ bearing in mind that the owners of the famous NIKE mark prevailed last year against NIKE and design for various restaurant -related services.
A column from eWeek discussing the timetable of UDRP proceedings, using a matter I handled as an example.
I didn’t know there was an Irish boyband named WESTLIFE but the fact that its record label’s application for WESTLIFE was rejected by the EU’s Court of First Instance, because of prior rights in WEST owned by a German cigarette company, has gotten a lot of press coverage.
Pencils down. We asked whether, if you were reviewing a trademark search, whether you would clear SURVIVOR for sunscreen if there was a prior rights holder for SURFVIVOR for identical goods. In this Ninth Circuit decision, the Court affirmed dismissal on summary judgment that plaintiff did not prove that the marks were confusingly similar.
An article from wwwcoder.com discussing a patent application recently filed by Google reportedly covering part of its relevancy algorithm. The author draws the following conclusions as to how Google determines freshness, one of the components of relevancy:
The frequency of all web page changes
The actual amount of the change itself whether it is a substantial change redundant or superfluous
Changes in keyword distribution or density
The actual number of new web pages that link to a web page
The change or update of anchor text (the text that is used to link to a web page)
The numbers of new links to low trust web sites (for example, a domain may be considered low trust for having too many affiliate links on one web page).
Although there is no specific number of links indicated in the patent it might be advisable to limit affiliate links on new web pages. Caution should also be used in linking to pages with multiple affiliate links.