By Paul
Justice Frankfurter in Mishawaka Rubber & Woolen Mfg. Co. v. S.S. Kresge Co., 316 U.S. 203 (1942) makes the case for protecting your trademark:
“The protection of trade-marks is the law’s recognition of the psychological function of symbols. . . . Whatever the means employed, the aim is the same – to convey through the mark, in the minds of potential customers, the desireablity of the commodity upon which it appears. Once this is attained, the trademark owner has something of value.”
By Paul
This is probably not news to anyone. But it has been a significant issue in copyright litigation lately. A judge in the of the Northern District of Illinois dismissed a suit filed by the Steele Law Firm on the grounds that it hadn’t identified any individuals as defendants and hadn’t served anyone either. A list of IP addresses would not suffice. Much of the fury over the copyright troll litigation has been that the plaintiffs have a list of IP addresses and nothing more. They then subpoena ISP’s who disclose the name of the subscriber who was assigned the IP address. Plaintiff’s then contact that subscriber demanding money.
This leads to a number of problems, not least of which is that the person who’s name appears on the ISP billing statements is often not the person who did any infringing activities. The infringer, if there is one, might not be in the household or even known to the person being identified. There is often a great deal of pressure to settle however, even if the person identified by the IP address is totally blameless.
Story on Techdirt with Judge Baker’s Opinion
By Paul
The FTC recently testified before Congress that there should be a function in browsers to allow a “Do Not Track” option. I am a bit cynical about how effective this might be considering I get robo-calls offering to lower my interest despite the “Do Not Call” list and I still get spam despite CAN-SPAM and other legislation. But as always, details matter. Is this going to work or cripple the free ad-supported Internet we have grown to love and loathe? I offer for your consideration a links:
FTC’s Statement
CNN’s “Do Not Track Would Cripple Web Giants”
Statement from the EFF
How Would Do Not Track Work?
By Paul
I came across this post in the Freakonomics blog about how we value “pioneers” or people who make something entirely new and the “tweakers” who take existing works and improve them. Its a good article about an interesting problem because both “pioneers” and “tweakers” make art and technology better, but in different ways.
By Paul
I missed this when it was originally published. I spoke to the IABC a couple of weeks ago about internet law for marketing and public relations professionals. In attendance was Jen Carlton of Priority Marketing who blogged about the copyright and fair use portion of my talk. Thank you Jen!
I’m not surprised that the group found fair use to be interesting because its one of the more frequently contested and misunderstood areas of copyright law. You can read Jen’s post for a bit of fair use law and I’ll probably be blogging about it again soon.
