–Dan Kelly, Attorney
In light of the news of Michael Jackson’s passing (may he rest in peace), and as we ready for the likely months-long parade of tributes, allow me to make mine early, and then be done.
Despite the corpus of undeniably catchy pop music, standard-setting music videos, and well-recognized dance moves, I submit
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I will assume that by now you have heard of the Crunch Berries lawsuit that was dismissed about a month ago in federal district court in California. If not, you should read this post about it at the blog Lowering the Bar. (The update is also quite humorous.) The brief summary
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
This past Tuesday, June 9, Facebook, Inc. announced on its blog that, as of 12:01 EDT on Saturday, June 13 (that’s tomorrow), Facebook users will be able to register for unique user names on a first-come, first-served basis. Each user name will be incorporated into a personalized URL of the format http://www.facebook.com/firstname.lastname or http://www.facebook.com/username, depending upon the user name.
Trademark or other proprietary name holders may fill out a form at this page to prevent Facebook users from registering particular marks or names as usernames under this scheme. Facebook has also set up a FAQ page here to answer some questions about these new user names, and provides a form here by which a trademark owner can challenge someone else’s use of a protected intellectual property right.
David Berkowitz has additional details over at Ad Age.
Commentary after the jump . . .Continue Reading Time to Defend your Rights on Facebook
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
My wife and I recently received a gift of chocolate, called the Marital Bliss Bar, from Bloomsberry & Co. The packaging is quite humorous:
Bloomsberry’s other chocolates are also in generally humorous packages, with some bordering on edgy, even racy — all can be viewed at its website.
Humor in marketing
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I have a good friend who, on point of principle, eschews endorsing large corporations. Consequently, when he comes to possess t-shirts that bear corporate logos, he wears them inside out, so as to defeat the nominal marketing power they may have. He gets a bit of a thrill knowing that he will
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
The Minnesota Twins are opening a new outdoor ballpark next year. At the end of last year, the Twins mailed me a nifty little digital timer that was pre-set to countdown to opening day for the 2010 season. (These timers hit 500 days back in November.) While I am an enthusiastic Twins fan, I am also admittedly a geeky engineer, and my first thought was, “I wonder if the battery is going to last until opening day 2010?”
Yesterday morning, I discovered the answer:
Let us hope that this is not some sort of portent for opening day 2010!
The Twins should look into getting their money back from the supplier. This is a good reminder that in a contract for a supply of promotional goods, especially ones with batteries, make sure the seller warrants that they’ll do the job.
Now, for the really geeky engineer types, it looks like I will be able to replace the batteries and reset the clock. Innards detailed after the jump.Continue Reading When Promos Go Wrong
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Gripe sites have been around for almost as long as the Internet itself, and they tend to be difficult to shut down. Conventional wisdom among brand owners is to send a threatening letter and play the odds that the (likely) individual with an axe to grind will not want to get sued
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
What do you think, infringement or not?
vs. 
How about these?
vs. 
No, I did not just learn how to use Photoshop. If you live east of the Rockies, you likely know Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Edy’s ice cream. If you live west of the Rockies, you can’t buy either Hellmann’s or Edy’s.
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I am earnestly trying to reserve judgment on the prospect that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN” — the proverbial “man behind the curtain” of the Internet) is actually going to go through with its roll out of opening new generic top-level domains (“gTLDs“) to
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
This seems like a lot of work for an April Fool’s joke. Some even think that it shouldn’t be a joke. It would be interesting to know whether Verizon has had anything to do with this or whether johnson banks is just trolling for work.