StatMarket reports that direct navigation – typing a URL into a browser’s address bar, or using a bookmark, is increasingly being used to access a website, at the expense of links and search engines.  Direct navigation is used 64%, up from 53% a year ago.  Links and search engines are being used 35%, up from 46%. I would have liked to see the breakdown between URL’s and bookmarks but this article doesn’t provide it.

Lee Strasbery played Hyman Roth in Godfather Part 2 but before that he was famous as an acting coach, training Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe among others.   Someone named Dluhos registered LEESTRASBERG.COM.  Strasberg’s estate, owners of a federal regsitration incoroporating the name, protested.  The Strasberg estate brought a UDRPand Dluhos went into civil court, pro se, and filed all sorts of actions, including constitutional attacks on the UDRP.  He screwed up service so the UDRP was not stayed, and the panel issued a decision against him.  Dluhos amended his complaint and the district court reviewed.  It dismissed Dluhos’ claims and upheld the UDRP decision, reviewing it under the strict standards of the Federal Arbitration Act.  Under the FAA, you essentially have to show that the arbitrators were either corrupt or on crack before the Court will vacate the arbitration.

The Third Circuit reviewed.  Held:  The FAA only applies to non-binding arbitration where the arbitration might realistically settle the dispute.  Because the UDRP was expressly intended to not deprive parties of access to civil courts, it does not fall under the FAA.  However, a district court may still review a UDRP decision because 15 USC Sec 1114(2)(D)(v) of the ACPA (Section 32(D)(v) of the Lanham Act) provides jursidiction from it to do so.  The case was remanded for a de novo review of the UDRP  action (which will now in effect become an ACPA action).  Dluhos v. Strasberg, no. 01-3713 (3d Cir Feb 20 2003).

Thank you to nerdlaw.org for bringing this case to my attention.

The Intellectual Property Constituency of ICANN will be meeting this Friday at INTA’s offices (1133 Ave. of the Americas, NYC, NY) at 11 AM.  The meeting is open to members.  We will be discussing the upcoming Rio meeting of ICANN. There will be phone participation.  Organizations or individuals may join the IPC and receive instructions as to the secret handshake.  Membership information is here.  Officers of the IPC will stay after the meeting to give autographs.

Thanks to a reader at Kilpatrick Stockton for sending me this article from SeattlePi.com on the re-branding of AvenueA to AQuantive, Inc. It sounds like a somewhat typical experience for a company going through a name-change but I disagree with two statements in the article.  The first is the comment that dictionary words are either not protectable or prohibitively expensive to protect.  I don’t think that’s universally true.  Trademarks consisting of dictionary words such as RED STRING SOFTWARE or BLUE ANT ADVERTISING would make fine (and probably affordable) trademarks.  Second, I disagree that all the good animal names for cars are taken, as the chart of the Permian Era illustrates (this from Ditmars and Carter’s The Book of Prehistoric Animals, London 1935, via The University of Brighton’s School of Design site).

Probably because Google is announcing a lot of new things at once (buying Pyra, content-targeted advertising, world domination, etc.), the usual Google buzz has turned into palpable Fear and Loathing of Google.  I apparently added a little momentum to the debate via Dave, with my comments regarding Googles “free ride” by selling paid advertising.

I want to be clear on the “free ride” issue (and I don’t want Google to be mad at me).  There are multiple instances of “free rides” on the Internet and in real life, and while sometimes the free ride rises to trademark or copyright infringement, or unfair competition or unjust enrichment, most of the time, few are actionable.

The example I utilized – comparing a Google search for TRADEMARK  to a Google search for TRADEMARK BLOG -illustrate the ambiguities of the situation.  In the first case the searcher (presumably) only knows the subject of the resource he/she desires.

 

Metal wire was invented in approximately 400 AD.  Barbed wire was invented in the 1870’s.  Plaintiff began selling barbed wire in 1889.  It began coloring the top wire strand red in 1920 (and received a trademark registration for red top wire fencing in 1921).  Its KING RANCH wire is pictured above.  Defendants began selling green top wire fencing in 2000.  Plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction as it has “a better than neglible chance” of establishing that defendants’ placement of any color (not just red) on the top wire of a barb wire fence will likely cause confusion with plaintiff’s mark.  Keystone Consolidated v. Midstates Distributing, 65 USPQD2d 1492 (CD Ill Dec 2002) (decision applarently not online).

More on the history of barbed wire here.