Intellectual Property Law

Char’ed, I’m sure

Posted on December 08, 2009
Poor Starbucks.  So much trademark trouble they have!  Other trouble, too.  And now the people who gave you five-dollar coffee in a paper cup have lost another one — one they thought they had won, namely the Starbucks v. Charbucks case (decision here, posted by Marty; the real name of the case is Starbucks Corp...

Jihadi Faux?

Posted on December 08, 2009
Counterfeit Chic reports that the world really does revolve around intellectual property! Last week in Maryland, a traffic stop yielded a cache of counterfeit Nike sneakers, LV and Coach handbags, additional illegal merchandise — and a CD titled “Jihad Freedom for the Slaves...

Regrets — I’ve had a few.

Posted on December 08, 2009
Eric Goldman reminds, “Blog in haste, regret at leisure.”

Anti-Sedition Acts begin their attack on the Internet

Posted on December 07, 2009
Originally posted 2006-01-16 23:17:14. Republished by Blog Post PromoterDifferent River reports on the biggest threat to free speech ever — the McCain-Feingold Act and its state law copycats. Is there any chance that the new and improved Supreme Court will save us from this not so petty tyranny? Or will the present controversies over [...

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A post by any other name would smell as Tweet

Posted on December 07, 2009
Having said that, here are some of the fragrant little nothings from all over been told by the little birdy, and which I’ve passed along via Twitter @roncoleman in the last week or so: @MegLG: via Media Law Prof Blog: IP and Social Networks http://ow...

More bad news for reporters seeking exemption from laws

Posted on December 07, 2009
The AP reports: A federal judge told two San Francisco Chronicle reporters they must comply with a subpoena and tell a grand jury who leaked them secret testimony of Barry Bonds and other elite athletes ensnared in the government’s steroid probe...

Blog o’ briefs

Posted on December 04, 2009
Just found this blog called Trademark Law Briefs.  It’s all Ninth Circuit stuff — which is plenty. It’s short little “briefs” summarizing recent trademark law decisions in that August federal Circuit, by California lawyer Cynthia Jones...

“What could they be thinking” Department

Posted on December 04, 2009
Originally posted 2006-07-19 14:16:44. Republished by Blog Post PromoterReuters reports: India has banned access to 17 Internet Web sites and blogs it says preach messages of religious hatred, an official said on Wednesday. But in scrambling to obey the order some of India’s Internet service providers have simply blocked users from looking at entire domains such [...

The great white domain extension

Posted on December 04, 2009
Originally posted 2006-05-24 01:30:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter The Register reports: From today, trademark holders from within the mobile industry have the chance to register their trademarks as .mobi domains. Call me Ishmobile. UPDATE:  Is the ...

Decline and Fall

Posted on December 04, 2009
Originally posted 2007-11-28 12:36:07. Republished by Blog Post PromoterCounterfeit Chic reports on yet another indignity visited on the famous girl singer who is presently popular culture’s most pathetic public death spiral:  a European sanction for generating and displaying a counterfeit Vuitton car in a music video...

Settling in

Posted on December 02, 2009
Originally posted 2007-09-07 13:37:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Foley Square viewOriginally uploaded by Ron Coleman I took this view of Foley Square, where the courthouses and many other public buildings in Manhattan are, when I stopped to eat a bite before attending a mediation before a federal magistrate judge yesterday on the Guss’ [sic] Pickle [...

Trademark rights in interdigitization

Posted on December 02, 2009
Originally posted 2007-05-15 21:32:04. Republished by Blog Post PromoterNick Daly drops me a note to the effect that one Jay-Z, gazillionaire rhyming scatologist, has been sued by a professional perspirer and leaping stage goon called Diamond Dallas Page — ach! my kingdom for a stage name! — for the former’s “Roc-A-Fella Hand Gesture,” [...

Eat here, get gas. But not if you’re Jewish!

Posted on December 02, 2009
Yes, that’s the famous old joke on the roadside filling station sign.  Well, not the second part.  But evidently it’s not a laughing matter at Luke Oil, which overstepped the bounds of what is and isn’t kosher in trademarks: Lawyers for the Orthodox Union, a kosher food certification group, filed a court motion Monday to dismiss [...

The Big L

Posted on December 02, 2009
Originally posted 2005-10-02 10:24:31. Republished by Blog Post PromoterJack Shafer writes in Slate , regarding the Judith Miller turnaround that sprung her from jail and had her tweeting birdy-like to the grand jury investigating the Plame leak: Miller’s former attorney Abrams, a charming man who returns phone calls, did not return the Post’s...

Testing the Anti-Sedition Act

Posted on December 02, 2009
Originally posted 2006-04-23 09:45:06. Republished by Blog Post Promoter(Dead links replaced on reposting.) I’ve argued tiresomely (heh) that the problem with the McCain-Feingold Anti-Sedition Act is that it gives a privileged position to one kind of commercial speech — the kind made by commercial enterprises that happen to be in the media business — [...

Adam Smith, Esq. and the AmLaw 100

Posted on December 01, 2009
Originally posted 2006-05-08 12:26:02. Republished by Blog Post PromoterBruce McEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. talks about his own brush with the IP owners’ bar, in particular in connection with his dicing and slicing the AmLaw 100, and runs through another version of the “sweat of the brow” analysis we discussed just yesterday...

He’s got the key

Posted on December 01, 2009
Eric Goldman, author of one of the bona-fide-deserving, regularly updated, ABA-Blawg-100-listed and actually fairly indispensable Technology & Marketing Law Blog updates us on a beat I’ve written on a whole bunch but given up hope on following comprehensively...

No “30% solution”

Posted on November 30, 2009
Here I am, sitting 44 stories above the Garment District itself (when I’m not standing under its immortal needle, shown below), and I needed Staci Riordan’s new fashion IP blog all the way out on the Left Coast to tell me about the “30% rule” which she, wisely, advises designer clients doesn’t exist: There are two [...

Starting ‘em out young

Posted on November 26, 2009
Originally posted 2007-02-11 19:43:15. Republished by Blog Post PromoterCounterfeit Chic looks at tomorrow’s counterfeiters. Well, that’s how Susan looks at them, anyway. When you’re a carpenter everything looks like a nail, you know?

Dirty laundry

Posted on November 26, 2009
Originally posted 2007-07-12 13:20:00. Republished by Blog Post PromoterUsing the names of fallen soldiers on t-shirts to make a political statement is in poor taste, but should it be — as is evidently now the law in Arizona — illegal? No, because there’s a Constitution, and this would be pretty down the middle [...

Diversion, yes, but no

Posted on November 26, 2009
Some people have all the luck in the Eastern District of New York.  Whereas me — I think I’ve got it coming to me right down the middle, and then it seems to get, I don’t know — diverted from me! So some lawyers get assigned judges in the Eastern District of New York whose ideas [...

Q the Lawyers

Posted on November 24, 2009
Originally posted 2005-03-27 00:00:00. Republished by Blog Post PromoterA report in the online Financial Express says that Nissan is suing Audi over “Q.” To wit: ?We are seeking to bar Audi from using any names that could infringe on Nissan?s right over the letter ?Q?,? she added...

“I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I am a Bear of no Brain at All”

Posted on November 24, 2009
Originally posted 2007-02-11 12:53:51. Republished by Blog Post PromoterBefore beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it. The Winnie the Pooh litigation takes another “Explore”: In the latest move in a long struggle with Walt Disney Co...

Death By Lawyer

Posted on November 24, 2009
Originally posted 2007-06-13 20:42:40. Republished by Blog Post PromoterThey make that sound like a bad thing. Now, I wouldn’t agree with each and every little thing Stan Schroeder, the author of this article on Mashable, says — such as this about MP3...

Ode to the Code

Posted on November 24, 2009
Originally posted 2007-03-12 00:44:37. Republished by Blog Post PromoterYehuda Berlinger, whose poetic version of the Lanham Act we linked to anon, also did the Copyright Act last summer.  Somehow I missed it, but since then I’ve been doing a lot more copyright litigation anyway, so I can use it now...

Section 230 attacks get nowhere, but forests still shrink

Posted on November 24, 2009
Originally posted 2006-11-19 20:52:56. Republished by Blog Post PromoterA court seems, according to this synopsis by Eric Goldman, to lay it out straight in dismissing a case brought in California against Craigslist. The claims was that the classified-ads site should be held responsible for “discriminatory” housing listings submitting submitted by third parties and [...

They always get their man

Posted on November 24, 2009
Yes, people do have some funny ideas of what kinds of things to protect with copyright, don’t they?   A few years ago, criminal enterprise Milberg Weiss (in its pre-conviction days) tried to assert copyright in its own specie — the legal papers it filed to generate kazillions in crooked class-action fees — and not [...

The Floyd Abrams Myth

Posted on November 23, 2009
Originally posted 2005-08-16 13:29:30. Republished by Blog Post PromoterMickey Kaus links to this story about “the federal government’s decision to drop subpoenas issued to The New York Times and the writer of a series of articles the newspaper published in 1998 about former CIA operative Luis Posada Carrile...

Trademarks — and Copyrights — in the Public Interest?

Posted on November 23, 2009
Originally posted 2005-09-26 18:31:09. Republished by Blog Post PromoterWired News reports: Transit officials in New York and San Francisco have launched a copyright crackdown on a website offering free downloadable subway maps designed to be viewed on the iPod...

More on the “secret copyright treaty”

Posted on November 23, 2009
Is it really that bad?  Last March I took a quick look at what some of the anti’s were saying, and focused mainly on the question of whether the treaty was properly classified.  I didn’t line up, exactly, behind Cory Doctorow, the EFF and friends (I usually don’t, at least not on copyright), but I [...

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