But What About Words Like “Dinsey”?

Last Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would make it a federal felony for Webmasters to use innocent words like “Barbie” or “Furby” but actually feature sexual content on their sites. 
Anyone who includes misleading “words” or “images” intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be [...]

Authorized Generics

This post will be of interest to several of our clients.  Last Thursday, three U.S. senators launched an effort to ban a practice that they say could lead to higher drug prices for consumers by undermining competition in the country’s $250-billion pharmaceutical market.
The lawmakers introduced a bill to limit the marketing of “authorized generics,” which are [...]

A Tough Claim to Make?

According to this article, the owner a the publication The Greater Baton Rouge Business Report has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the group that is publishing a competing or related publication called The Livingston Parish Business Report.
Insofar as the publications are distributed in the same area, there is perhaps a chance that readers [...]

CCTV Condoms?

No, I don’t mean “closed circuit tv.”  I mean “China Central Television,” China’s state television company.

Li Zhenyong, from Fujian Province in the southeast, applied for the trademark registration [CCTV] on January 6, Monday’s Chongqing Economic Times reported.
The application covers ten products, including a cervical cap, condom and non-chemical contraceptives, that would sport the brand name [...]

Pride Goes Corporate :: Update

By way of update of this post, here is another article about Pride as a trademark/service mark.

Tom Cruise Wins tomcruise.com

According to this article, Tom Cruise has been awared the domain name tomcruise.com by a WIPO UDRP panel. In a three-member WIPO panel, the domain name was taken from notorious domain name registrant Jeff Burgar and “returned” to Cruise.
Jeff Burgar owns and operates the fan website Celebrity1000.com, which in addition to featuring many third party [...]

YouTube.com Gets Slapped With © Suit

Fad du jour, YouTube.com, is being sued by a journalist who owns the Los Angeles News Service claiming copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims that the video-sharing site encourages copyright infringement by hosting footage from users who have failed to secure the necessary clearances from the videos’ owners. 
It’s the first-ever copyright lawsuit filed against YouTube, and, [...]

Pride Goes Corporate

In Canada, gay Pride has gone corporate.  Or so it would seem.  Here’s the background:
Jamie Lee Hamilton is alarmed.
The transsexual activist says the Vancouver Pride Society (VPS) is hassling her for using the word “Pride” on two events she’s got planned for this year’s celebrations.
The events in question–Man Pride and Tranny Pride–were scheduled to take [...]

Google-ACS Settle Scholar Lawsuit

Search giant Google has settled a lawsuit with academic publisher the American Chemical Society (”ACS”).
In 2004, ACS filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that the free “Google Scholar” journal-search service unfairly competes with ACS’ “SciFinder Scholar,” which appears to be more comprehensive but charges a fee.
“SciFinder Scholar is well-known and long has been well-received throughout [...]

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 [...]

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