Headnote of the Day: “Godzilla” is not descriptive

West has a fun, free feature where they pick a headnote and send it out to subscribers.  It’s not always amusing, but today’s was of high quality: Even if trademark “Godzilla” was hybrid of Japanese words for gorilla and whale, trademark was not merely descriptive; large amount of imagination was required to associate trademark with [...]

Sweet, sweet hypocrisy

Honestly, I thought it would take longer for a story like this to surface.  But it didn’t! Shepard Fairey is the creator of the iconic Obama “Hope” poster. He’s been admired by critics and guerilla artists, and just weeks ago he was the subject of a profile on CBS Sunday Morning. But Pittsburgh graphic designer [...]

Little Miss Infringer

IP360 reported today about an interesting trademark dispute between the Walt Disney Corporation and company named Thoip.  Thoip holds the right to the popular “Little Miss” series of childrens books. In 2007, Disney began purchasing officially licensed Little Miss T-shirts featuring characters from the books to be sold in the gift shops at Disneyland, making [...]

Law firm trademarks – extra important to protect?

Recently, Jones Day filed a complaint against real estate web site Blockshopper.com, alleging (among other things) that the use of deep links to attorney bio pages on the Jones Day web site constituted trademark infringement.  Blockshopper.com chose to accept a settlement in which they simply were required to change the way that they link to [...]