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 secret sauce recipe, and has forbade his employees, including SpongeBob, from telling Plankton the secret.  If Plankton were to lawfully purchase a krabby patty, he could lawfully reverse engineer the recipe.  However, Mr. Krabby has barred Plankton from buying one.

Can Mr. Krabs lawfully refuse to sell Plankton a krabby patty?

If Plankton takes control of SponeBob’s brain (see episode 3), thus controlling his actions, and secures a krabby patty in that manner, can he lawfully reverse engineer the secret sauce?

Two of my favorite subjects, trademark litigation and soccer, in one story. Nike has sought a declaration of non-infringment of the mark USA 2003, apparently in response to demands from soccer’s governing body, FIFA, that it owned exclusive rights in the term in relation to soccer.  FIFA has previosuly established rights in terms such as France 98 and Germany 2006.

FIFA’s site here.

Various soccer commercials here.

 

AP reports that the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification System has sued the Library Hotel (a hotel overlooking New York’s Public Library) over its use of the Dewey Decimal System to number its hotel rooms (for example Room 700.003 has books on the performing arts), arguing that the use of the system falsely suggests that the hotel is connected with the owners of the system.

This is a real story, not one that I got from The Onion or The Borowitz Report.

The System was invented by Dewey in 1873 but before you say Dastar, we are told that the system is constantly updated.  To the best of my knowledge there is no owner of the Liannean Classification system, and therefore someone could open the Zoo Hotel and name the rooms after animals.