Registering a Trademark in a Movie
Here's an interesting article in Los Angeles Lawyer by Jonathan Handel, a lawyer at Troy Gould about trademarking movie titles. Good stuff.
Sticks and Stones: Thinking About Cease and Desist Letter Strategies
The web is alive with links to the response of Kurt Denke, the CEO of Blue Jeans Cable (and former litigator) to cease and desist letter from Monster Cable. http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes-back. Setting aside the merits of his response, this is a great example of how the life of a cease and desist letter has changed. It has to be assumed that every cease and desist letter will be loaded on to the web and picked apart by those who disagree with the trademark or copyright holder. As a result, it's critical that those of us sending these letters think not only of how the cease and desist letter will look as an exhibit in litigation, but also how it will reflect on the client or company when it's posted on the web.
And, of course, you can get even more ridiculous. Have you heard the one about the lawyer who won a copyright infringement lawsuit for the posting of his cease and desist letter... http://www.prweb.com/releases/DozierInternetLaw/InternetLawyer/prweb650951.htm
Trends in Cybersquatting
According to some recent numbers from WIPO, 2008 should be a boom year for cybersquatting. Here are the annual number of complaints filed by trademark owners under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP):
Then again, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
My Life. My Card. My Slogan
A few years ago, American Express starting running the "My Life. My Card." campaign, featuring De Niro, Tiger Woods and (my personal favorite) Wes Anderson. But who came up with the slogan? Stephen Goetz said he did. Goetz, a consultant for Mez Design at the time, sent Amex a proposal:
"`My Life, My Card' American Express delivers personalized cards to its cardholders!"
Goetz's idea, according to AP, was to "enable credit card customers to personalize a card by choosing a picture to be printed on the card's face." Amex went ahead with its own "My Life. My Card." campaign and sought a declaratory judgment that it wasn't trampling on any of Goetz's rights. Goetz counterclaimed for misappropriation and TM infringement. Goetz lost and appealed.
On Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found for Amex. Why? According to the court,
"Goetz employed the slogan `My Life, My Card' to generate interest among potential licensee credit card companies and not to differentiate the origin of his goods or services."
The appeals court said the slogan served as "a mere advertisement for itself as a hypothetical commodity."
"There can be no trademark absent goods sold and no service mark without services rendered," the court added.
The entire story is here.
The Growth in IP Statutes
Landes and Posner's slim volume on the political economy of IP law is worth a read, and at under thirty pages, it's not that much of a time commitment. Among the many gems inside it is this graphic on the growth of U.S. IP statutes (in terms of words and pages):
Admittedly, this a crude measure of statutory growth. Still, as of 2000, copyright was leading with patent law second and trademark law third. (Both patent and TM lagged growth in the U.S. Code generally.)
The AEI has a PDF version of the book here.
