You haven’t lived as a trademark lawyer until you have (1) received a demand letter from Converse saying that your client infringed their distinctive ALL STAR and star logo marks; and (2) received a demand letter from Levi’s saying that your client infringed something about LEVI’S jeans.  Here is an article reporting that Levi’s has added ESPRIT to its list of 300 companies it has sued for trademark infringment.

A Court of First Instance decision upholding an OHIM decision to reject Best Buy’s Community Trademark application on the grounds that all the individual elements, the words BEST BUY and the shape and color of the mark were not distinctive.  IPKAT commentary here.

Best Buy Concepts v. Office for Harmonisation of the Internal Market, T-122/01 (July 3, 2003).

Good article from The Boston Globe Magazine by Tracy Mayor on fan fiction and the difficult copyright, trademark and business issues raised when fans like a work so much, they create unauthorized derivative works.  Quotes from J.K. Rowling’s publishers:

“From Scholastic, her US publisher: “We are very appreciative of Ms. Rowling’s fans. We are only concerned with anything that denigrates the property or is disparaging of it.” From Warner Bros.: “We object only to fan fiction that is offensive to children, meaning anything sexually explicit, violent, or profane.”

From Rowling’s London-based agent, The Christopher Little Literary Agency, this comment: The author “welcomes the huge interest that her fans have in the series and the fact that it has led them to try their hand at writing.” Therefore, the agency says, Rowling and her agents act to enforce her copyrights only when there is a commercial angle, when work purports to be written by Rowling herself, or “where the fan fiction is pornographic or inappropriate for kids.” “

The illustration is by Glynis Sweeny, from the Globe article.

IPKAT reports that several brand owner associations (such as MARQUES) have issued a communique in support of the European Commission’s proposal to abolish the post-filing search report delivered by the Community Trademark office, OHIM.  Unlike the U.S., these searches of prior filed marks are for informational purposes only and the results do not serve as bases for rejecting applications.  Given that one of my clients was recently charged about $200 by the foreign associate for merely forwarding the report (and asking if I wanted a detailed analysis), abolishing the search has its merits.

Hormel, makers of SPAM, is suing SPAM ARREST, purveyors of spam-blocking software, according to this Seattle Times article. 

Here is the text of Hormel v. Henson, wherein Hormel could not stop Henson from using Spa’am as a name for a wild boar in a Muppets movie.  Here are the spam haiku archives.  Here is the Monty Python spam sketch.

And it is interesting to note that Spam Arrest owns a federal trademark registration for SPAM ARREST (disclaiming SPAM).

Consumer WebWatch, a project of Consumer Union, has released a study entitled: “False Oracles: Consumer Reaction to Learning the Truth About How Search Engines Work.”   It reports its major findings as:

1. Most participants had little understanding of how search engines retrieve information from the Web or how they rank or prioritize links on a results page.

2. The majority of participants never clicked beyond the first page of search results as they had blind trust in search engines to present only the best or most accurate unbiased results on the first page. As a result, two-in-five links (or 41%) selected by our participants during the assigned search sessions were paid results.

3. Once enlightened about pay-for-placement, each participant expressed surprise about this search engine marketing practice. Some had negative, emotional reactions.

4. All participants said paid search links on search and navigation sites were often too difficult to recognize or find on many sites, and the disclosure information available was clearly written for the advertiser, not the consumer. Search engine sites that were perceived to be less transparent about these related disclosures lost credibility amongst this group of online consumers.

What is described as industry reaction is here.

 UPDATE:  The study is an ‘ethnographic’ study in which four cultural anthropologists spent an average of 6 hours each with 17 pre-screened ‘experienced web researchers.’  The study itself discusses the choice of method, and points out that this approach allows for in-depth understanding of how a small group of subjects behave.  Of course 17 is way too small a number for this to be considered a representative sampling.  This study does, however, come on the heels of a previous Consumer Union study of 1500 respondents, 60% of whom did not know that search engines accepted fees for placement.