Merck v. Mediplan Redux–Keyword Purchases Really Aren’t Trademark Use
…displays, or associated documents, nor do they use the marks to indicate source or sponsorship….This internal use of the keyword ‘Zocor’ is not use of the mark in the trademark…
Competitor’s Keyword Ad Purchase May Be Trademark Infringement–Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline
…first solid data point (in the US) that buying competitors’ trademarks as keywords, without more, could constitute trademark infringement. This could permanently reduce the market size for keyword ad sales….
Barrett on Internet Trademark Use
…often failed to focus on the appropriate role of the “trademark use” requirement, which has traditionally limited the scope of the trademark infringement (and more recently, trademark dilution) cause of…
Top Cyberspace IP Cases of 2005
…settlement have not been publicly reported. 5. Making a Mark – Patent Marking Statute Applies To Websites A pair of patent cases illustrates how the traditional patent concept of “marking”…
BitTorrent to Enforce BITTORRENT Trademark
…trademark rights in BITTORRENT against software developers who make unauthorized use of the mark in their branding and marketing. Those who want to use the mark will need to gain…
Metatags as Per Se Trademark Infringement–Tdata v. Aircraft Technical Publishers
…company’s mark in metatags constitutes infringing use of the mark to pull consumers to Tdata’s website and the products it features, even if the consumers later realize the confusion.” The…
Anti-Marketing Laws and the Commercial Speech Doctrine
By Eric Goldman Prompted by the Supreme Court’s denial of cert in the White Buffalo case, Chris Hoofnagle of EPIC posted a nice rundown of some recent cases where anti-marketing…
Tattoo Advertising/Human Billboards
…no adult stores and no “666, the mark of the beast”. In contrast, I think the bad-idea-for-cheapest-price winner is Kari Smith (a/k/a Karolyne Smith), a Utah woman who got a…
2005 Blog Year-in-Review
…Mark McKenna’s Branded Products as Ingredients, John Ottaviani’s Federal Circuit Refuses to Register Pennzoil’s Clear Motor Oil Bottle as a Trademark and Judge Patel: Maintaining An Index of Downloadable Files…
Man Bites Dog–Music Publisher Apologizes for Overreaching C&D
By Mark Schultz In a truly newsworthy item, Billboard reports that music publisher Warner/Chappell “privately and publicly” apologized to Walter Ritter. Ritter is the creator of PearLyrics, an software app…