Pep the Dog

It appears that the 30 year old Trademark fight between Apple Computer Co. and Apple Records is finally over.

Thus proving once again that all you need is love...and several billion dollars. I guess this means that the Beatle's catalog will now be available for download in the I-Tunes Music Store - but does anyone still care?

For the kids:

Just so you know, The Beatles was a popular beat combo in the 1960's and 1970's, Apple was the name of their record label at the time.

'Records' were large black circular discs made from vinyl - a bit like CDs only bigger. The disks had grooves cut into them. A metal needle would slide along the grooves in the disk and make sounds (mostly popping and scratching sounds).

Vinyl is a fragile black plastic that was popular at the time.

There were no video games back then, which is why music was so popular.

On Edit - spelling

United States Patent and Trademark No. 1,139,254 is not much to look at: a pentagon surrounding a childlike drawing of a seagull in flight.

But the design for a Levi’s pocket, first used 133 years ago, has become the biggest legal battleground in American fashion.

Levi Strauss claims that legions of competitors have stolen its signature denim stitches — two intersecting arcs and a cloth label — for their own pockets, slapping them on the seats of high-priced, hip-hugging jeans that have soared in popularity.

more

From Breitbart.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Cisco Systems Inc. said Wednesday it is suing Apple Inc. in federal court over Apple's use of Cisco's registered iPhone trademark for its new handheld device.

Cisco has owned the trademark on the name "iPhone" since 2000, when it acquired InfoGear Technology Corp., which originally registered the name.

And three weeks ago, Cisco's Linksys division put the trademark to use, releasing an Internet-enabled phone called "iPhone" that uses the increasingly popular Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

On Tuesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone, its "game-changing" touch- screen-controlled cell phone device that plays music, surfs the Web and delivers voicemail and e-mail.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, Cisco senior vice president and general counsel, in a statement. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

Cisco is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying Cisco's iPhone trademark.

"Today's iPhone is not tomorrow's iPhone. The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand," Chandler added.

Has nothing to do with Trademarks. I just like the Simpson's.

The BBC reports that Singer Mariah Carey has threatened legal action against politician/adult film star Mary Carey, for filing a Trademark application for the mark "Mary Carey" following the actress' unsuccessful campaign for governor of California.

Grammy-winning Mariah Carey is particularly concerned by the possible confusion between the names because the actress has filed the trademark application for use on audio and video recordings.

But David Beitchman, a lawyer for Mary Carey, said he believed Mariah Carey stood little chance of winning a court battle over the names.

"My first thought was, does Mariah Carey realize what her lawyer is comparing her to and are they seriously concerned?" he said.

"Do they seriously think the fans are going to be confused?"

Three copyright violations, but a plea for forgiveness at the end. That should work...

C-Net reports that in their third major patent case this year, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments about what courts should consider when deciding whether an invention is too "obvious" to warrant protection. Software and hardware makers have long complained that a glut of so-called junk patents threatens to disrupt the way they do business.

The decision has potential to significantly impact the High Tech industry. From the article: "Several Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Intel and Cisco Systems, have submitted supporting briefs that urge the Supreme Court to revise an earlier ruling. That ruling, they claim, has helped make it easier to obtain patents on seemingly 'obvious' combinations of pre-existing inventions."

KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has created the first trademark that is visible from space. The construction was made by 65,000 1x1-foot tiles and covers about 2 acres. The logo was built and assembled over about a month and is located in the Nevada desert near Area 51. The article also has a short video showing the construction in time-lapse. Now the aliens know where to get greasy, tentacle lickin' good food.

From the Washington Post:

Trademark Office to Experiment With Telecommuting
By Stephen Barr
Wednesday, October 25, 2006; Page D04


Want to work for a Washington area agency and live on the Florida coast, or in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, or among the bluebonnets of Texas?

As fanciful as that may seem, it will be possible under a telecommuting pilot project developed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- inside the Beltway in Alexandria -- and one of its unions.

Some government lawyers may move far away from their office under a pilot project. Eventually the Patent and Trademark Office hopes to let employees live elsewhere without having to show up once a week. Under the pilot, 10 experienced trademark lawyers with good job-performance ratings will be permitted to move anywhere in the continental United States and work from home.

"To my knowledge, there is no other program like this in the federal government," said Howard Friedman , president of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 245.

There is a catch. The lawyers must show up once a week at the Alexandria headquarters, at their own expense. That requirement will allow the PTO to keep the employees on the roster at agency headquarters and avoid triggering a law that mandates reimbursement for employee travel and per diems.

The "geographic expansion pilot," as the PTO calls the project, is scheduled to start next year and will be evaluated after six months. If the program is successful, the PTO plans to allow more lawyers to volunteer for it and to seek a waiver from Congress and the Bush administration so that the long-distance telecommuters do not have to report in person each workweek to headquarters.

"Ultimately, we'd like to get to a point where people come in the office less frequently than once a week," said Deborah Cohn , deputy commissioner for trademark operations. "We'll be trying to get to a point where, if they live in North Carolina or Florida, they don't have to come in except on rare occasions."

Cohn said the PTO decided to sponsor the pilot program after hearing from employees who want to be able to move away from the Washington area for family or lifestyle reasons. "Telework is a fabulous retention tool," she said. "We want to keep them; they are good employees."

Cohn and Friedman said the pilot builds on a nearly 10-year-old trademark office program that permits attorneys to work from their homes. About 220 trademark lawyers, out of 265 who are eligible, are telecommuters. Trademark lawyers typically can apply to telecommute after they have worked at the agency more than two years and show they can successfully meet rigorous productivity standards.

Program rules require the telecommuters to live within 110 miles of the PTO -- a limitation Cohn said was designed for an era when the agency installed desktop computers in employees' homes and arranged for cable companies to provide Internet service.

Today, most trademark lawyers work on laptops, and changes in technology have made it easier for them to connect to agency networks from their homes. The advent of Internet-based telephone service also makes it less expensive for trademark lawyers to provide services to companies and others who do business with the agency.

The PTO is in the vanguard of the government's work-at-home movement. In addition to trademark lawyers, about 500 senior patent examiners are telecommuting in a program that began in February. Over time, it could grow to as many as 3,000 examiners.

Telecommuting has been increasing in the federal government since 2000, but only 7.7 percent of the federal workforce telecommuted in 2004, according to the government's most recent report. The participation rate jumped to 19 percent when measured by the number of jobs that agencies have declared suitable for telecommuting.

Cohn noted that the trademark office has some experience with long-distance telecommuters. The agency has permitted at-home work by an employee in Harrisburg, Pa., and one in Long Island, N.Y., she said. A number of agency telecommuters live in the Annapolis and Baltimore areas, she noted.

The pilot, Friedman said, shows the value of telecommuting, especially for agencies updating contingency plans for redeploying employees if federal offices are closed because of pandemics or terrorist attacks.

Office chatter indicates that some trademark lawyers are interested in moving to Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Delaware and Illinois, Friedman said.

"Our people are chomping at the bit," he said. "I'll be curious to see how many people apply, and curious to see where they move

The Independent, UK reports "Google, becoming more and more concerned about the growing use of the word google as a verb, has fired off warning letters to numerous media organizations warning them against using its name as a verb. This follows google (with a lowercase g) being added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in June. According to a Google spokesperson: "We think it's important to make the distinction between using the word Google to describe using Google to search the internet, and using the word Google to describe searching the internet. It has some serious trademark issues.""

The Washington Post Reports that for second time in 14 years, a group of Native Americans has filed a legal challenge to trademarks for the name and logo of the Washington Redskins, saying the team's name is a racial slur that should be changed.

In 2003, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in the Redskin's favor and threw out the TTAB's decision to cancel six highly lucrative Redskins trademarks. She did not decide the case on the merits but concluded that the activists waited too long to challenge the Redskin trademarks that were first granted in 1967.

The attorney representing the Native American activists said the challengers in the new case are 19 to 24 years old. Therefore, these plaintiffs cannot have waited too long to sue, because they were not born when the first trademark was granted. The attorney said the new filing would force the courts to rule on the underlying issue of whether the Redskins name is disparaging to Native Americans, and therefore, the Redskin trademarks should be cancelled.

Reuters reports that Bacardi is planning to re-launch HAVANA CLUB rum in the US. The brand has had a checkered history in the US. Jose Arechabala S.A. originally owned the trademark in Cuba, but the Cuban Government seized the company and all of its assets in 1960. In 1990, Bacardi, just looking for trouble, bought the mark from Arechabala.

In the meantime, the Cuban Government and a French company, Pernod Richard, formed a joint venture to market HAVANA CLUB rum. However, the US Supreme Court ruled that the joint venture had no right to the HAVANA CLUB trademark in the US and the TTAB ruled that the joint venture’s mark was cancelled.

In the light of this ruling, Bacardi has decided to enter the market using the HAVANA CLUB mark even though the joint venture of Cuban government company and Pernod Ricard has been marketing Havana Club-branded rum in many countries outside the United States.

Sounds like a Trademark attorney’s dream-come-true.

Wikipedia has been under siege by the INTA and prominent Trademark attorneys/bloggers. The complaint is the same as the complaint against the Acronym Finder : non-experts can post information on these sites. Therefore, the information may not be accurate - or it might. Who knows?

However, a recent study in the journal Nature found that Wikipedia had only slightly more errors than the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica.

The study revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

I'd say Wikipedia can be just as useful and probative as anything else, but like any evidence, it's rebuttable; I certainly wouldn't rely on it alone.

From alert reader Matt Kline of L.O. 102

Fossil rockers Steely Dan claim that the new Owen Wilson movie "You, Me and Dupree" was ripped off from their Grammy-winning song "Cousin Dupree" about a similar houseguest from hell.

In a move unusual in today's environment of ridiculous and embarrassing intellectual property lawsuits, the band leaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen merely asked Owen Wilson to appear at a show in Irvine, California, to apologize to the band's fans. Wilson, in return, would get Steely Dan merchandise and a chance to party with the group.

"He would have to cop to the fact that what he and his Hollywood gangster pals did was wrong and that he wishes he had never agreed to get involved with this turkey in the first place," says the pair. "

Becker and Fagen claim that "some hack writer or producer" heard Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree," about a hormonal houseguest, and "when it came time to change the character's name or whatever so people wouldn't know what a rip the whole thing was, they didn't even bother to think up a new (expletive) name for the guy!" They go on to trash the movie (a "summer stinkbomb") and Wilson. "Instant karma is a fact, Jack," the pair writes.

In a statement released by his spokeswoman, Ina Treciokas, Wilson said: "I have never heard the song 'Cousin Dupree' and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, 'HEY 19.'"