Cease and Desist Letter

LingLouieMenuPreparing to send off to college my two oldest sons, led us to Ling & Louie’s Asian Bar & Grill’s rooftop patio on Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall last week, and we found an interesting menu item.

Under the Sandwiches category: “Smashed Burger,” is treated generically as a type of sandwich burger, along with “Kobe Beef” and

You have to be one big fan of a company or product to establish a World {What-You-Cannot-Live-Without} Day.  Well, a sticky situation with the well-known hazelnut spread Nutella may have you rethinking your public affection.

Back in 2007, Sarah Rosso (Nutella Fan) established World Nutella Day to celebrate her affection for Nutella.  Within the past

There 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

Who says that being a large corporate trademark owner is one of the prerequisites to earning the emotionally-charged, pejorative, and ill-defined label “trademark bully“?

Well, the original directive to the USPTO appears to assume that “trademark bullying” is a one-way street, disfavoring only large corporate trademark owners, and ignoring the possibility