According to Brandweek, quoting a CLC.com study, the best-selling University trademark, according to royalites, is North Carolina. Rounding out the top ten: Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, Nebraska, Georgia and Florida State. The top selling manuacturer of University-branded apparel was Nike, and of non-apparel was Electronic Arts.
Blogs, Esq., an article from Corporate Counsel magazine. I should probably re-name my site A Trademark Blog, so as to rank higher in these alphabetical lists of law-related blogs (might hurt my secondary meaning argument, were I to file, however).
Text of German decision prohibiting pop-up ads, discussed here yesterday, again thanks to BNA Internet Law.
I get the critical last sentence in this article from a newspaper located about 20 minutes from Volo, Illinois. Background here.
Worldcom changing its name back to MCI is only the most recent example of re-branding to avoid badwill associated with a trademark. We will likely not see ADELPHIA, GLOBAL CROSSING or ENRON used much in the future even if the businesses themselves continue. Louis Tompos, a 3L, argues in a note in the Harvard Law Review that re-branding can cause the type of consumer confusion trademark law is supposed to guard against. He argues that people believe “If I had known it was really ValuJet, I would not have chosen AirTrans.” He suggests that some sort of double-branding period be mandated, similar to the Prunes/Dried Plum model.
Having read the abstract, I wonder if existing law isn’t sufficient. A new name (or more to the point, a denial of connection to the old name) may or may not be a false statement of origin actionable under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. Usually defendant says that they are someone they are not, here they say that they are not who they are.
‘Badwill,’ 116 Harv. L. Rev. 1845 (available on Westlaw).
The BNA Internet Law Newsletter (recommended free subscription here) reports that a German court has ruled that pop-up ads triggered by a user leaving a website are illegal, as they force users to take notice without consent. Case number 2a0 186/02 (landegericht).
If you haven’t heard of or read about this decision by 10 AM Monday morning, then you’re just not trying. Dive into Copyfight for limitless links.
No, really, here. Via Matt Rolls A Hoover. Can we expect more comic books from NGOs?
This Slashdot article on MOZILLA branding made me ponder the trademark ramifications of open source licensing, which led me to Dennis Kennedy’s excellent open source law site.
Charles Douglass, inventor of the Laugh Track, has died at the age of 93. Here is an article from sciencenews.org reporting an experiment that laugh tracks didn’t affect an audience watching The Simpsons (perhaps becuase that show is actually funny). Those results somewhat contradict this study on canned laughter here where canned laughter increased ‘mirth results’ (now there’s a name for a blog). More on laughter here.