So, tomorrow is the big day, the big game, or whatever else other intimidated advertisers might call it. I just want to find the best deal on a flat screen television today! But, more to Mike Masnick’s point on Techdirt about the NFL’s reputation as a “trademark bully,” and his challenge to advertisers — “It’s the Super Bowl…. Continue Reading
Category Archives: Almost Advice
Subscribe to Almost Advice RSS FeedRedefining a Trademark Bully?
Posted in Almost Advice, Articles, False Advertising, Mixed Bag of Nuts, SoapBox, TrademarksWe’ve spilled a lot of digital ink discussing the trademark bullying topic, going all the way back to my original blog post from 2010: ”The Mark of a Real Trademark Bully.” Within the last several days, there has been quite a bit of online media coverage about Trademarkia’s new features that tout an ability to “Find… Continue Reading
Enterprise Social Media the Next Frontier
Posted in Almost AdviceIs your company thinking of adopting a social media platform to replace its current website? If it is, then your company is part of the majority of companies that have either implemented a social media platform, is planning to implement a social media platform, or will implement a social media platform but has no current… Continue Reading
Lacking Credibility
Posted in Almost Advice, Branding, Genericide, Loss of Rights, Marketing, TrademarksI’ll have to say, I really enjoyed Aaron Keller’s guest post from yesterday. In addition to the valuable insights he provided, it got me thinking about some perhaps unrelated, but parallel topics of likely interest to legal and marketing types. Aaron wrote about the importance of a brand being honest with itself and others. He expressed the need… Continue Reading
Technology Predictions for 2012
Posted in Almost AdviceWhat does the future hold for technology in 2012? Not surprising, but many of the predictions involve the continued movement to the cloud. Randy Muller of Global Knowledge predicts the cloud movement will be "THE mantra this year and will certainly be more pervasive and louder in the years to come," and that "that SaaS… Continue Reading
Brilliant Trademark Advice or Baloney?
Posted in Almost Advice, Genericide, Marketing, TrademarksA few bits of trademark advice recently passed across my screen from The Marketing Blog: Turning Entrepreneurs Into Marketers – advice that I believe deserves some friendly comment and critique, leaving you to decide whether any of it rises to the level of brilliant trademark advice or sinks to the level of trademark baloney: "Trademark as you go. Don’t wait… Continue Reading
Cloud Computing Residue
Posted in Almost AdviceOne of the often touted benefits of cloud computing is the ability to scale. Scale up when demand increases and scale down when demand recedes. Scalability is about doing what you do in a bigger way. It is all about allowing more people to use your application. Generally, when people refer to scalability in the cloud context they… Continue Reading
Security in the Cloud, Your Protection May Be Under Your Control
Posted in Almost AdviceOne of the major reasons for the trepidation with moving to the cloud is security. Data security breaches have garnered a lot of attention in the media and rightly so. Breaches are expensive to remedy and, if the breach involved personal identifiable information, a company needs to restore the confidence its customers may have lost… Continue Reading
Actual Notice and Imputed Knowledge
Posted in Almost Advice, Infringement, TrademarksMy son snapped this photo during a recent family trip to Washington, D.C. It almost has become a hobby for him to capture people in the act of ignoring a sign’s specific request or doing exactly what a sign purports to forbid. While some retreated from the water in the World War II Memorial when they… Continue Reading
The Microsoft Cloud is Entering China
Posted in Almost AdviceThe United States may still be leading in cloud computing sales, but China’s appetite for cloud computing services may be growing faster than the United States. Gartner found that 55 percent of Chinese respondents are willing to spend 10 percent of their total IT budget on cloud computing compared to 42 percent in Europe and 49… Continue Reading
If You Build It, They May Not Come Anymore.
Posted in Almost AdviceOver the years, the increase in Internet use and projections for future Internet use caused a boom in the construction of data centers. Data centers house and link the servers and other hardware that form the backbone of the Internet. And many companies and states want a part of the action. Minnesota, for example, passed a… Continue Reading
What’s 50/50 Legal Advice Worth to You?
Posted in Almost Advice, Branding, Infringement, Marketing, TrademarksEarlier this month, Seth Godin wrote an interesting blog post called "The overwhelming fear of being wrong." In it he writes: "Almost every marketer I know underestimates how widespread this fear is. It is the lone barrier almost every product and service has to overcome in order to succeed." Fear of being wrong can also… Continue Reading
When Silence is Not Very Golden
Posted in Almost Advice, Infringement, TrademarksWhile it is true that not responding to a trademark cease and desist letter is always an available option, I tend to believe it is rarely a good choice. The strategy of silence seldom makes the issue go away, it often ends up costing the recipient more money to resolve the issue, and it is… Continue Reading
How Much Government Do We Really Need?
Posted in Almost Advice, Guest Bloggers– James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, President, The Lukaszewski Group Division of Risdall McKinney Public Relations I’m sitting here at 7:45 a.m. moving very slowly in what is the first of four daily rush hours in this lane of eastbound I-494 in South Minneapolis. One has to wonder what all the media excitement is… Continue Reading
Let the Cloud Platform Wars Begin!
Posted in Almost AdviceMicrosoft is joining the battle for cloud platform supremacy through the release of Office 365. In doing so, Microsoft joins the likes of Google and VMware to see who will emerge as the new power brokers of the IT industry. Microsoft held the distinction of being the power broker in the PC era, but the cloud… Continue Reading
Baird on Branding & Trademarks
Posted in Advertising, Almost Advice, Branding, Infringement, Law Suits, Marketing, Non-Traditional Trademarks, Product Configurations, Sight, Smell, Sound, Taste, Touch, TrademarksThere aren’t too many things I enjoy more than speaking about the legal implications of branding. Our friends at BlackCoffee captured a talk I gave to a group of marketing types a while back, on black and white film (thank goodness), and they have graciously posted a 34 minute excerpt, here. Some of the topics I… Continue Reading
International Internet Governance
Posted in Almost AdviceMemorial Day is a time for saying goodbye and, in one sense, saying goodbye around this time of year to a group of people has become automatic for many of us. I am referring to the many graduating seniors from high schools and colleges around the nation. Those institutions say goodbye to one class of students in… Continue Reading
Data Security in the Cloud
Posted in Almost AdviceIt didn’t take long for the lawsuits to start after Sony notified 77 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity online service customers that their credit-card data, billing addresses, and other personal information might have been stolen. On April 27th, Johns v. Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern… Continue Reading
Losing the L-Word
Posted in Advertising, Almost Advice, Branding, Guest Bloggers, International, MarketingOkay, nobody wants to be a "loser," unless, of course, you happen to be the biggest one, but that’s beside the point, because that’s not the L-word I’m talking about today. No, I’m talking about a much more traditionally positive L-word, as in "leader," but as I learned earlier this week, at an excellent breakfast seminar hosted at Padilla Speer Beardsley (PSB) headquarters in Minneapolis, entitled… Continue Reading
Will the Outcome of the Net Neutrality Debate Derail the Cloud Computing Train?
Posted in Almost AdviceCloud computing is changing the game on how business is conducted and how businesses operate much like the PC revolution. And the cloud computing trend is roaring forward. A new wave of cheap mobile devices will soon provide many more people with access to the Internet and mobile app market. Then there is the tablet wave that was… Continue Reading
Consolidation in the Cloud: Some Factors to Make Your Company an Attractive Target
Posted in Almost AdviceVerizon Communications Inc.’s recent acquisition of cloud-computing company Terremark Worldwide Inc. caused some analysts to speculate that there may be more consolidation in the cloud-computing industry. Consolidation in the cloud-computing industry would not be surprising since, according to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, cloud computing is at the top. This means there are many market participants in the cloud-computing… Continue Reading
Breaking Up May Be Harder in the Cloud
Posted in Almost AdviceSome of the cloud confusion that I previously discussed must be subsiding because even though only 7% of small businesses were using cloud computing services as of April 2010, that number is expected to exceed 10% by mid 2011 according to technology research firm IDC. Either that or more small businesses feel they need to jump on the… Continue Reading
Open Source Software in the Cloud
Posted in Almost AdviceHere is a fun fact; Facebook is or was based on cloud computing. Cloud computing consists of three types of computing services: (1) software as a service; (2) platform as a service; and (3) infrastructure as a service. Facebook used Amazon.com’s EC2 platform to build its social network website. A computer platform is the computing… Continue Reading
A Good Old-Fashioned Priority Fight
Posted in Almost Advice, Trademarks, TTABThe Trademark Trial and Appeal Board issued a rare decision at the end of last month in the case of Weatherford/Lamb, Inc. v. C&J Energy Services, Inc. The two companies offer, among other things, oil and gas well fracturing services (explanation here). Weatherford uses the trademark FRACSURE for its services, and C&J uses FRAC-SURE. C&J… Continue Reading
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Duets Blog Authors
Steve Baird
Just so you know, I'm all about brands and the law, both professionally and personally. I regularly annoy family and friends in retail stores by focusing on product labels—not to buy the product, but to read the fine print and ask, "Who owns these brands" and "Did they really register those marks?" More...
Dan Kelly
You can call me a “non-traditional” attorney, which is a polite way of saying that I did not attend law school straight out of college. I spent five of my first six years after college as a junior high school teacher. The other year I worked as an engineer for a large corporation. More...
Sharon Armstrong
Voted most likely to become an actress while in pre-school, I don’t think I surprised anyone by becoming a lawyer, the steadiest professional gig open to those with a flair for the dramatic. More...
Brent Lorentz
Although I wish I could say my path to the law was the result of a lifelong dream or calling, it was more the result mere curiosity and an affinity for leather-bound books. More...
Catlan McCurdy
Having long been told by my parents that I could do or be anything I wanted, I chose at the age of 10 to become an attorney, as it was the career that would most likely lead me to my goal of becoming the first woman POTUS.More...
Tiffany Blofield
Although my initial career path was to be one of the Supremes (not the musically talented ones with platform shoes and sequins, but rather, the nine wearing sensible shoes and pressed black robes in DC), I will likely stay in Minnesota as I have never lived anywhere else. More...
Brad Walz
My law career started on the ice…as a defensive hockey player (we’re not talking professionally…and if I were, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into law). More...
Susan Perera
Born into the world with an aptitude for science and an affinity for art I found my career path quickly chosen for me. More...
Joy S. Newborg
When I took a personality/career test in high school to determine which path in life I should follow, I was told I should either be in broadcast journalism or law. So after I went to undergraduate school for broadcast journalism and film/television, I went on to obtain my law degree from the University of Minnesota. More...
Derek Allen
In hindsight, writing about creativity and the law may have always been in the cards for me. I began training for a career in litigation at an early age by finding ways to disagree with pretty much anyone about pretty much anything. In my longest-running “case,” I argued with my middle school math teacher, Mrs. Jabs, for the better part of four years over whether, even if I got the right answer, I had to show my work to get full credit. More...
Laura Gutierrez
An attorney I am not. Though told to become one, I don't possess those qualities needed to be an effective one (I lack confrontation skills, and although I can write a great argumentative essay, I can’t argue outside a sheet of paper). More...