Service by…

Sheriff?  Mail?  Letters rogatory?  How about by Facebook?
In an apparent first in Australia and, likely the world, a judge has approved a plan to serve a default judgment on a non-appearing defendant via the social networking website, Facebook.  
The court okayed the Facebook approach after all other efforts failed, according to attorney Mark McCormack, who represented the [...]

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Chris Knight writes:
Last fall, as part of my campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education, I produced three commercials that ran on local television. The first of them – which I simply dubbed “Christopher Knight for School Board TV Commercial #1″ – was hosted on YouTube the same evening that the ad started running on [...]

Carrefour Misses a Point

In fact, in all public uses of Carrefour’s transliterated CARREFOUR mark in China, there is a mistake in the presentation of the Chinese version of CAREEFOUR.
French supermarket chain Carrefour slightly misprints a character in its Chinese trademark, a sharp-eyed costumer has recently pointed out. China Central Television (CCTV) reported the customer pinpointed miss of a [...]

MySpace Comments Protected by Free Speech

An Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a judge violated a juvenile’s free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal.
“While we have little regard for A.B.’s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech,” Judge Patricia Riley [...]

Wyeth Hit with $3 Million Judgment

A Pennsylvania jury awarded $3 million on Tuesday to an Ohio woman who claimed a hormone replacement drug made by Wyeth had caused her breast cancer.
The woman, Jennie Nelson, 67, of Dayton, was found to have breast cancer in 2001 after taking the drug, Prempro, for five years to treat symptoms of menopause. Her lawyers [...]

Lessons To Be Learned

Back when I was still in my in-house job, I was often asked to review internal “pep-rally” style programs. Often these programs included the playing of popular or well-known music. That part was easy. We could check and see if a song was covered in our annual license with a music rights company (such as [...]

Trademarks in the Drink Field

The link below is a summary of…interesting…trademark matters in the energy drink field:
http://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/newsmaker_article.asp?idNewsMaker=11481&fSite=AO545&next=4
Here’s a taste:
The media is reporting that Jose Canseco is coming out with an energy drink called “Juiced”….Perhaps there is a part of this story that hasn’t become public yet, but “Juiced” is a name that is already being used in this category [...]