A Sharp Stick in the Eye of Trademark Law?
By Mark McKenna Over at his interesting blog (which Mark Schultz plugged a little while back), Grant McCracken has a post discussing modern marketing practices in terms of their “roundness”…
Women and Law School
By Mark McKenna If I told you that a famous professor from a well-known law school was arguing on his/her blog that law schools should consider discounting their tuition by…
You Don’t Know Jack
By Mark McKenna The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a story about SparkNet’s attempts to enforce trademark rights in the name of a radio show format (SparkNet refers to the format of…
My Famous Blog Post (R)
By Mark McKenna A couple of days ago I received an email from Restoration Hardware advertising its Famous Fall Lighting Sale(R). On top of my mild annoyance at yet another…
Why I hope Google loses
By Mark McKenna The blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of the Authors Guild’s lawsuit against Google. See here, here, and here, in addition to Eric’s post here. UPDATE: this post…
Branded products as ingredients
By Mark McKenna Brett Frischmann tells a story about trying to buy his son a cookie with M&M’s on it and having the person working at the cookie stand insist…
More on Shortsightedness
By Mark McKenna Guest blogger Brett Frischmann has a really good post over at madisonian.net. He argues that at least some of the problems New Orleans has experienced in the…
When a guitar is just a guitar
By Mark McKenna The 6th Circuit today released an interesting decision restricting the application of initial interest and post sale confusion doctrines, at least in the context of product configuration….
IP and Cognitive Psychology
By Mark McKenna William Patry has an interesting post over at his blog about how courts go about determining substantial similarity in copyright infringement actions. The post resonated with me…