Great news, easily confused consumers! General Mills has forced the local Utah bakery “My Dough Girl” to change its name so you won’t confuse their hand-crafted specialty cookies with the Pillsbury Doughboy. The company sent the two-year-old local bakery a cease and desist letter complete with a gag order explaining that the bakery could “tarnish the company’s reputation.” [More]
intellectual property
Hurt Locker Producer Sues "Moron" Downloaders
By 6.1.10
Nicolas Chartier, the movie producer who was banned from the Oscars for sending nastygrams about Avatar, and more recently, told a critic, “you’re a moron who believes stealing is right. I hope your family and your kids end up in jail,” is nothing if not consistent. Chartier has made good on his earlier threat to sue people who downloaded copies of The Hurt Locker, by filing a suit against 5,000 anonymous downloaders in Washington, D.C. [More]
Would You Like To Buy A Facebook Account?
By 5.4.10
If you’ve got $45 burning a hole in your special black market fund and have a hankering for a bundle of 1,000 stolen or fake Facebook accounts, you might want to talk to your friendly neighborhood social networking pirate. [More]
NYC Police Dept Stops Giving Counterfeit Clothing To Charity
By 1.13.10
It turns out H&M and Walmart aren’t the only two organizations caught destroying clothes they couldn’t sell. Yesterday the New York Times reported that the NYC Police Department has also been destroying clothing that would otherwise be wearable. The big difference this time is that the clothing is counterfeit. [More]
Browns Fan's Case Against EA Dismissed, Will Probably Be Settled
By 10.16.09
It looks like Big Dawg is getting his.
Browns Fan Sues Because Madden Game Shows His Iconic Mask
By 10.6.09
Cleveland Browns fanatic John “Big Dawg” Thompson, famous for wearing an intimidating bulldog mask in Cleveland’s rowdy Dawg Pound section, is suing Electronic Arts for using his likeness in the Madden NFL 10 video game, several video game blogs are reporting..
Corporate Lawyer To Corporations: Stop Suing Websites!
By 4.4.09
A well-respected lawyer has a simple message for corporations: stop suing disgruntled customers who start websites to air their grievances. Though William Pecau of Steptoe & Johnson thinks that online gripers are “self-righteous narcissists with time on their hands,” he also realizes that “shutting down a gripe site generally is not easy, often cannot be done, and often is counterproductive.” Pecau goes on to explain exactly why most online gripers are safe from over-hyped takedown notices…
MonsterCable Offers Wilted Olive Branch To MonsterMiniGolf
By 12.15.08
With the launch of monsterminigolftruth.com MonsterCable has offered a wilted olive branch to Monster Mini Golf. In summary:
Tell Monster Cable To Stop Suing A Monster-Themed MiniGolf Park
By 12.10.08
If you would like to tell Monster Cable that they’re jerks for trying to shut down the family owned and operated Monster MiniGolf…
Monster Cable Sues Monster MiniGolf For Trademark Infringement
By 12.3.08
Monster Cable has decided to sue Monster MiniGolf for trademark infringement. Monster MiniGolf is a family startup by Patrick & Christina Vitagliano glow-in-the-dark monster-themed minigolf franchise with 23 locations. Monster Cable, which has an illustrious history of suing anything and everything with Monster in its name, makes the expensive cables that Best Buy is always trying to upsell you on that are no better than coat hangers.
Leaked ACTA Treaty Will Outlaw P2P
By 6.6.08
ACTA—the misleadingly named “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”—is the worldwide copyright treaty that’s being negotiated behind closed doors, and that will create a sort of global DMCA if continues in its current state. Now Wikileaks has posted a draft of the treaty, and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow gives his take:
All Saints Apparel Plagiarizes Shirt Design From Gaming Site 4 Color Rebellion
By 2.23.08
Posh London retailer All Saints Apparel plagiarized a shirt design from the gaming site 4 color rebellion. The site originally unveiled the ‘You Complete Me’ tetris-heart figure for Valentine’s Day in 2006. Designer Mitch was surprised to find that All Saints had plastered the exact same design on a shirt selling for £40—that’s like, $90! Mitch asked All Saints for an explanation, which was enough to prompt a decent resolution.
Harvard Bookstore: "We Own ISBN Numbers"
By 9.24.07
The Harvard Crimson ran a story last week about a student who was asked to leave the premises for writing down the prices of six textbooks at the Coop, Harvard’s bookstore of record. The bookstore’s president says that there’s no official policy against students writing down information, but “we discourage people who are taking down a lot of notes.” But what’s more surprising, he tells the Crimson that the textbooks’ ISBNs—which can be used to look up the same books online—are “the Coop’s intellectual property.”
Manufacturer Claims eBaying Its Car Parts Violates "Intellectual Property Rights"
By 7.18.07
Manufacturers are getting eBay auctions canceled for selling their products “too cheaply,” reports the Consumer Law & Policy blog…
By 7.14.07
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If it didn’t already exist, would the tenor of today’s debate over intellectual property and digital rights management prevent the creation of a library system? Probably, according to Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics. “Perhaps they’d come up with a licensing agreement: the book costs $20 to own, with an additional $2 per year for every year beyond Year 1 it’s in circulation. I’m sure there would be a lot of other potential arrangements. And I am just as sure that, like a lot of systems that evolve over time, the library system is one that, if it were being built from scratch today, would have a very different set of dynamics and economics.”
