Not trademark law, but the law as to what extent a fictional character may be based on a real person is always of interest.  A non-fiction book portrayed, in part, plaintiff.  The book was sold to Paramount, which produced “Hardball.”  Keanu Reeves plays the part of a character who appears to be based on plaintiff, with a couple of unflattering characteristics thrown in.  Plaintiff sues for libel, defamation and related claims.  Seventh Circuit analysis here.  Muzikowski v. Paramount, No. 01-4314 (7th Cir, Mar 6, 2003).

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. 

Apparently Mr. Rogers gave key testimony in Sony v. Universal, the Supreme Court case which cleared the way for home taping.  The story of the testimony is here, via The New York Lawyer.  Good quote:

My whole approach in broadcasting has always been “You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.” Maybe I’m going on too long but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

Oblique title reference explained here.

The Coca Cola Company has updated its Chinese script logo in time for what its press release refers to as The Year of Coke.  The designer indicates that his goal was to “create a Chinese equivalent with the unique Spenderian style fluidity while imbuing it with a modernistic touch.”  The famous COCA COLA logo is in Spencerian script. 

More on branding in China here.

 

Cultural Revolution poster from here. 

Before you do anything else, go make a list of every domain name you think you own.  Include the ones which aren’t active, or which merely re-direct.  Now look up the whois of each and every one of them, making sure that ALL the contact information is correct.  And (assuming you still own the names you think you own), update any incorrect contact data.  Next, go extend the terms of the names you absolutely can’t allow to drop.  If you have just missed the renewal date, you have 30 days under the “redemption grace period.”

Remember, some employees, when they leave your employ, tend not to say to you “By the way, in one year, three months, the renewal notice for your valuable domain name will be sent to what by then will be my inactive email address.”

Maintaining domain names apparently is not that easy.  It is my understanding that there is a certain large domain name company which offers portfolio management services.  It drops so many names under its care that it has hired an outside company to act as a stalking horse to buy them back.

I used to think that an opt-in auto-renew policy would solve the problem of inadvertently dropped names, and I lobbied a little for that at the IPC.  Verisign ignored the concept (it was proposing its Wait List Service at the time).  One of my clients (a Registrar) explained to me another problem with auto-renew.  The registrars would get killed on credit-card charge backs.

So the best procedure right now seems to be maintaining accurate lists of your domain names, and getting long terms for the valuable ones.

 

The owners of the VICTORIA’S SECRET trademark failed to establish that an adult novelties store named first VICTOR’S SECRET and then VICTOR’S LITTLE SECRET diluted its trademark. Decison here.  Background here.

As to whether the standard under the FTDA should be actual dilution or likelihood of dilution, the Lanham Act says “causes dilution” not, “causes dilution or likelihood of dilution.”  So that’s that.

Also important : the Court implies that the junior mark does not have to be identical to dilute.

Also important: “. . . mental association will not necessarily reduce the capacity of the famous mark to identify the goods of the owner, the stautory requirement for dilution under the FTDA . . . ‘Blurring’ is not a necessary consequence of mental association. (Nor, for that matter, is tarnishing.’) (pg. 15).

Now the process of amending the law begins.

UPDATE:  SCOTUSBlog, provides commentary on the decision here and a different Marty at SCOTUS discusses the decision further here.  I do agree with his comment that this Court is hostile, not so much to dilution, but to the tautological manner in which dilution has been proven until now.   BUICK SHOE POLISH is dilutive because BUICK SHOE POLISH is an example of dilution.  I do not agree that the Court thought that VICTORIA’S SECRET is less deserving of protection because it consists of dictionary words.  The problem in this case was not the fame of the mark VICTORIA’S SECRET.  The problems were (imho) that defendant’s mark was no longer VICTOR’S SECRET but VICTOR’S LITTLE SECRET, and that it is expensive to prove dilution, assuming it really exists.

Vintage undies picture from here.