Posts Tagged: "trademark"

You have probably had circumstances when you have positively associated with a certain trademark.  Perhaps you were traveling and had the option to eat at one of several restaurants.  You might have preferred a sit-down meal, but you might have opted for McDonald’s or Burger King instead because you are familiar with what you will get, know it is going…

Classic Ink, Inc., owner of Classic Sports Logos brand apparel line and rapidly growing trademark licensing firm, secured a major legal victory in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas against American Needle, Inc., and its Red Jacket apparel business on Aug. 6, 2010. After a five-day trial, the seven-member jury returned a unanimous verdict finding American Needle and its Red Jacket apparel business infringed Classic Ink’s trademark rights. Readers may recall that just a few months ago it was American Needle that celebrated an important win, with a win over the National Football League at the United States Supreme Court. See American Needle v. National Football League.

Earlier today the Wall Street Journal gave front page space to a story relating to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Widely regarded as one of the “papers of record” in the United States, one might expect that the Wall Street Journal had brought its considerable clout to an important issue plaguing our time, such as an horribly under funded Patent Office that is holding innovation hostage, costing America perhaps millions of jobs. NO! Don’t get me wrong, every tabloid should have front page news story about pot, medical marijuana and have an image of a VW bus over the tag “the Canny Bus,” as the Journal did earlier today. Call me crazy, but I expected more from the Wall Street Journal.

At the start of the new year I pledged that I would start to try and expand the scope of IPWatchdog.com to touch upon intellectual property matters outside the United States. In part this means trying to add an international flavor where appropriate, which is certainly always possible in part through discussion of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). In another facet it means profiling interesting stories relating to foreign intellectual property laws.

from the business perspective when you are building a trademark or trademark portfolio it is really the good will that will define the value of the trademark. But like most things in life there is a double edge sword. There is positive good will and negative good will. Negative good will sounds silly I know, but it relates not to the absence of good will, but negative feelings. So, for example, BP is in the process of developing enormous negative good will as a result of the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.

The buzz continues about Lindsay Lohan’s suit against E*TRADE over its use of the name “Lindsay” to identify a “milkaholic” character in the latest in its ongoing series of talking-babies commercials. Not coincidentally, shortly before the Academy Awards broadcast—Army Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver brought suit in the District of New Jersey, alleging that the lead character of the film The Hurt Locker, which subsequently won the Best Picture Oscar, was a depiction of him, for which he was owed compensation.

Apple is capitalizing on what would appear to some as Microsoft “crying wolf” syndrome and putting into question whether the new operating system can be trusted because its issues have not been effectively resolved by any of the previously released PC Operating Systems thus far. These ads are brilliant!

The United States Supreme Court earlier today announced that they will not accept the appeal in the Harjo case, which means that the decision of the the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will stand as the final decision in the long dispute that sought to strip the team of its trademark as a result of the term “Redskin” being offensive and not susceptible of receiving trademark protection.

Today I was searching the Internet for some interesting news to write about and I stumbled upon a press release from Burger King regarding its a ¼ pound Double Cheeseburger now being available for only $1. In some markets the ¼ pound Double Cheeseburger has been available for $1 for the past 18 months, but now it is being added…

This post may not be as off-topic as you think simply by reading the title.  Yes, I will be licking my wounds as a result of an opening day fantasy football loss, but what is really prompting this article is a discussion this morning on ESPN radio with host Eric Kuselias, who incidentally was managing partner of Goldblatt, Kuselias &…

This past spring, a series of prank videos from a couple bored Domino’s employees captured the worldwide attention of the public and the media. Before they were removed from YouTube, they reportedly garnered a million views. In these videos, an employee put cheese up his nose, and farted and sneezed on sandwich fixings he was handling, while the narrator described…

Back in March 2009, I had an occasion to need to stay at a hotel I booked through Hotwire.com.  The hotel was nice enough, but there were a few things that were a bit peculiar.  For one, they did not offer dry cleaning services, which is odd for any hotel and particularly one not far from a major airport that…

As you may know, I am trying to determine the top patent blogs on the Internet, and voting for the top patent blogs is currently underway.  The plan has always been to have some fun with this, maybe get some traffic coming to IPWatchdog.com, but most importantly to try and raise the profile of what we all are doing and…

As a fan of the Dallas Cowboys it is hard to write about a Redskins victory, but the victory scored by Pro-Football, Inc. on behalf of the Redskins means that the Redskin trademarks will remain intact.  The ruling providing this victory for the Redskins came down on Friday May, 15, 2009, and should once and for all put this matter…

Chickenfoot is a new rock band that will release its debut, self-titled album in Europe on June 5, 2009, and in North America on June 9, 2009.  The band is comprised of guitar legend Joe Satriani, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith, former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and frontman Sammy Hagar, the original “Red Rocker” and a Rock…