–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Last week, a group calling themselves The Yes Men apparently perpetrated an elaborate hoax to usurp the corporate persona of the United States Chamber of Commerce, to the point of publishing a fake website and holding a press conference at the National Press Club, posing as the Chamber itself. (Image
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
VS. 
Remarkably, this is not a new promotion for World Wrestling Entertainment. No, a few outlets reported last week that WWE has opposed The American Wine Foundation’s application to register the trademark SOMMELIER SMACKDOWN for use in connection with “Entertainment services, namely, conducting contests in the field of food and wine
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Have you ever seen a bottle with a top that resembles this image? Do you associate it with a single source? Do you associate it with a particular product? If so, which source or product? Would you think that the product pictured below comes from the same source?
How about this one?
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I assume that most readers have heard that the universe of Internet domain names may be expanding next year. Instead of being limited to a finite number of relatively mundane top-level domain extensions like “.com” and “.org,” ICANN is planning to allow for the registration of any string of characters to the
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Professors at the University of Pennsylvania and at UC Berkeley School of Law released a study this week conclusively titled “Americans Reject Tailored Advertising,” suggesting that there is high resistance among individuals to tailored advertising on the Internet. (Press release from Penn here, NYT coverage here.) Although I have been
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Time for me to play dumb consumer and ask an honest question. What is the conventional wisdom in relaunching or revitalizing a brand: do you tell consumers that you’re doing it, or not?
I suspect that there is no universal answer, but Holiday Inn’s “relaunch” has admittedly caught my attention. (It caught Steve’s attention here.) Every morning on the way to work for the past several months, I have passed a billboard for Holiday Inn stating, “We’re making big changes.” Since my first viewing of the billboard, my brain has always followed with a thought along the lines of, “Well, you must have needed it.” Why would a company mess with success?
More commentary after the jump . . .Continue Reading Holiday Inn’s Relaunch: Do We Have a Problem, Houston?
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Wham-O, Inc. has had its share of hits over the years, achieving “household name” status (my opinion) with an impressive list of trademarked (I am not afraid to use it as a verb) products:
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
A couple of weeks ago, news reports came out that KB Toys, which had filed for bankruptcy in December, sold its trademarks and domain names to a company called CE Stores LLC for $2.1 million. Last week, Toys “R” Us disclosed that it owns CE Stores. While this may be somewhat
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
In giving advice in the field of intellectual property, one hackneyed phrase repeatedly crosses my lips: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
When it comes to protecting a brand or trademark on the Internet, I may start saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.”
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I think Steve once remarked something to the effect that the Internet is employment security for trademark attorneys. Road tripping is too. On one such recent occasion, my wife remarked on the similarity of Culver’s blue oval signage to Ford’s famous blue oval.
Obviously, there is no issue here from a trademark
