Many U.S. trademark owners have successfully relied on Article 6bis of the Paris Convention in order to protect their famous trademark from piracy abroad.  The U.S., in my view, sometimes grants a narrower scope of protection than other countries in situations where it is obvious the U.S. applicant has adopted a non-US company’s trademark (see Person’s v. Christman, 900 F.2d 1565 (Fed. Cir. 1990).

This Asia Times article alleges that a U.S. company has filed a piractical U.S. trademark application consisting of the logo of PetroVietnam, a large Vietnamese oil company.    More coverage here.  Interestingly, the U.S. applicant alleges use of the logo here since 1991.

The article indicates that there is a bi-lateral agreement beween the U.S. and Vietnam covering the protection of IP.  If we see litigation, this also looks like an opportunity to re-visit the U.S. scope of 6bis.

Certain acts become torts only when committed by a certain class of people with a certain intent.  Anyone, it seems, can make a fun of a trademark – but competitors can’t.  The Muppets can make fun of SPAM by naming a wild boar character Spa’am.  MTD, purveyor of Yard-Man Lawnmowers, however, cannot show competitor John Deere’s deer logo running scared (at least not under NY’s anti-dilution statute in 1994 (although it would seem to me that MTD could have said in its ads “We make John Deere run scared”).

Here’s a comment on a trademark that goes beyond poking fun and represents a direct attack on the trademark.  I suspect that the brand manager of CAMEL cigarettes did not want to see the huge illustration in the business section of today’s NY Times (free online subscription worthwhile to see illustration): a parody of the CAMEL package with the word CADAVER instead of CAMEL and a dead dog instead of a camel.  This version is being distributed on stickers to schoolchildren by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to protest experimentation on animals.  The stickers (which also parody SALEM and KOOL) depict monkeys, dogs and rabbits.  The tobacco companies, in response, indicate that they only experiment on rats (see tired old joke below).

If the tobacco companies think that the parody raises legal issues, they will confront a common problem – the louder they protest, the wider the distribution of the parody.

Most ironic line in article: quote from tobacco company executive: “PETA is acting irresponsibly handling out tobacco logos to children.”

Most original defense of animal experimentation, presented by different tobacco company executive: “I have to believe, if animals ruled the world, they’d do the same thing.”

Strangest sideshow: Mothers Against Drunk Driving are protesting PETA’s GOT BEER? Campaign targeted at college students, arguing that beer is more healthful than milk.  PETA’s response here.

Tired old joke: Labs are beginning to experiment on lawyers, rather than rats, because there are a limited number of rats, the researchers were getting attached to the rats, and there were some things the rats wouldn’t do.

 

 

UDRPLaw article on Go Daddy’s Domain By Proxy service, which allows the domain name registrant to keep his, her or its identity secret.  Great for limiting spam, that much harder to police the web. 

The inability to easily reconcile the domain name registrant’s privacy concerns with the public policy interest against anonymity in commerce, is, in my view, one more argument against unrestricted TLDs.  Commercial and residential zoning are often incompatible.

Allegedly, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wrote a letter to the Commissioner of the PTO arguing the case of constituent and donor, Bacardi, in the HAVANA CLUB matter.  I feel that even if he has better connections, I have more relevant experience, and you should still consider me for your trademark representation.   And I can certainly bring in a letter for under $50,000.

Register.com, ICANN registrar, is closing its domain name re-seller Afternic, after paying $48 million for it two years ago.   In the ICANN Watch post-mortem, a post signed by Anonymous argued that there is a place in the world for people who register domain names for $9, and then warehouse them:

“The domain name system needs speculators to bring special domains to relevant industries. Don’t expect the owner of Acme Hardware Company to have the time to hunt through domain auction sites to find a good generic domain for his/her hardware business. He/she is too busy running Acme Hardware!”

The thing is that, unlike a speculator, if Acme Hardware’s advertising agency thought up a good generic domain name to promote Acme Hardware’s business, it wouldn’t buy the name first to ransom it to Acme.

I think domain name speculation is a tax on e-business and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if it petered out.  However, this is old news, and in the words of another poster in that thread:

“. . . I’ve had this argument with you, or some other Anonymous . . .”

This is reportedly an email from Hilary Rosen of the RIAA to executives at Yahoo, Real Networks, AOL, and Universal Studios.  It asks their assistance in combatting piracy on P2P networks. Ms. Rosen indicates that new legitimate subscription offerings are imminent (that’s good news).  One paragraph caught my attention:

“We need to discuss:

1. Spoofing and/or interdiction methods for existing peer to peers – (perhaps by adding promotional messages about the launch of various new systems)”

I don’t know  precisely what methods are beig referred to.  Copyright holders should police their rights to the limits of the law, and advertising on these networks makes fantastic sense.  However, aspects of spoofing troubles me for various reasons.  And the image of the college student who thought he or she was getting the latest CD for free and instead gets a discount coupon for a subscription service – that’s just funny.

Registrant obtained the domain name JUSTDOIT.NET and re-directed it to its own website.  Nike brought a UDRP.  Two of the three panelists held that Nike didn’t make its case.

In my view the error of the majority is that while it concedes that complainant showed it has a strong unique mark and thereby created a presumption of bad faith, and if respondent appears and fails to rebut the presumption, that that is insufficient to establish bad faith.  Instead, we are told that the record is inconclusive.  The complainant has established a presumption of bad faith, and the panel is “troubled” by registrant’s arguments and “suspicious” of its allegations, nevertheless the record doesn’t seem to show bad faith.

The panel needs to get in touch with its feelings.

Peeble Beach golf course fails to stop PEEBLE BEACH single malt whiskey, in Scotland.  Possibly different outcome when they attempt to import into the U.S. Via herald.co.uk.

Robin Williams has a really funny bit about the invention of golf.  If I were to provide the link which I found using Google, I might be deemed to be committing contributory infringement.