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The Daily Show covers trademark!

By Rebecca Tushnet

Or at least the dispute between the Pull My Finger iPhone app and the iFart iPhone app:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
iFeud
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Due to the good offices of the plaintiff's counsel and eBay, I myself possess both a Pull My Finger Fred and a Fartman, subjects of a different fart-based IP case--that one copyright. Here, the apparently unrelated Pull My Finger app creator complains that the iFart relied on ads with "pull my finger" as the link text. If that's a protectable trademark, then that's dangerous behavior. Assume the term is descriptive but has secondary meaning: can using the term as link text be a descriptive fair use? If not, what would suffice? "A pull my finger app"? If that won't do it, what's left for descriptive fair use in short ads?

Full post as published by 43(B)log on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).