Search results for: super bowl

NY Times article (reg. req.) on NYC preparation for the 2012 Olympics, including creation of a special Brand Protection Board who would oversee ‘brand enforcement agents.’  The article notes that:

. . . the mayor has authorized an Enforcement Board on Olympic Brand Protection to “recruit and train auxiliary Olympic brand enforcement agents,” run a special city hot line to field complaints about ambush marketing and counterfeiting of Olympic-related goods, and seek legislation to increase fines for violators.

Previous Trademark Blog pieces on ambush marketing at the World Cup here and here, at the NCAAs, at the Super Bowl,  in-store advertising, and in search engines.

So David Stein of Naiad Studios was sitting in front of the computer this week when:

“I had a friend forward the [Miss Piggy image] to me the other day, just thinking they were passing on a joke.  I just STARED at the screen, like that bad picture of you in a leisure suit from the 70’s that comes back to haunt you . . .

That piece is probably 10 years old now, I can’t recall the exact date I created it.  It did it both as a joke and as an example of using PhotoShop’s cloning tool to create “Celebrity Fake” image that was all the rage back then.  It was originally posted to a PhotoShop user’s newsgroup along with a step by step on the process.  We all had a chuckle over it.  It also reappeared on a Fake Nude newsgroup soon after that.

It’s funny that nothing ever vanishes from the Net.  It’s curious how it only now resurfaces in light of the “Tempest in a B Cup”.”

I had suspected that the image had been created prior to the Super Bowl, unlike this version of Miss Piggy, which features the nipple shield.

That’s it for nipples this week on the Trademark Blog.  As Homer said this week on the Simpsons “I’m confused, is this a happy ending or a sad ending” to which Marge replied “It’s an ending, that’s enough.”

The Smoking Gun posts the complaint of a Knoxville woman who has filed a class action against Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, MTV, CBS, etc., on behalf of a class consisting of “all American citizens who watched the outrageous conduct” at the Super Bowl.”  Her theory is that the corporate defendants had an implied contract with every one watching, not to broadcast lewd and outrageous acts (paragraph 17).  Unfortunately, this plays right into the hands of the TV industry, which, now that we have admitted to the existence of an implied contract between us and the TV networks, will counterclaim that everyone who watches television has an implied contract not to use Tivo to skip commercials.  Background on one TV exec’s blinkwrap theory here.

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 unauthorized use of RAIDER trademarks.  Here is the decision from Playboy v. Welles, the Ninth Circuit case which sets out the line between truthfully describing your credentials and infringing upon the trademarks owned by those credentials. 

Sometimes you wake up in the morning thinking: “I’m going to sue somebody today, I just don’t know who.”  It is for just this moment that there is a John Doe Order – an ex parte order from a Court allowing a remedy such as seizure, where a specific defendant cannot be identified, and the intellectual property itself might have a limited economic value.  A typical fact pattern would arise where the trademark or copyright owner can establish a likelihood of piracy of a short-lived property (such as a logo commemorating a specific Super Bowl or arena concert) at an upcoming event.  At the event itself, a marshall can then seize goods falling under the parameters set out in the order.  The point is that the Super Bowl or whatever will have come and gone (and the market already destroyed) by the time the IP owner identifies the t-shirt bootlegger, serves papers, has a hearing, etc.

The Anand and Anand firm of India writes to tell me that the practice has reached India.  Recently, of India’s 40,000 cable operators, only 3,500 had entered into licenses from the owner of the rights to broadcast in India the Soccer World Cup.  Given the transitory nature of both the World Cup rights and the cable operators themselves (and the normal timeframe of the Indian courts), the Delhi High Court granted a order against anonymous defendants whereby the rights owner, accompanied by a court-appointed commissioner, was able to locate the unlicensed cable operators and shut down the unauthorized World Cup transmissions.

In India, they call this an Ashok Kumar Order.