The Liberal Party has launched an interesting crowdsourcing experiment. OnProbation.ca, a party-sponsored site, now includes a "feedback forum" that invites visitor to pose a question for the Prime Minister. Visitors can then vote on their favourites in a Digg-style format. Interestingly, the top vote getter thus far is a question on investing in Internet infrastructure.
Reports this evening indicate that the G20 has reached an agreement to establish a World Intellectual Property Litigation Court. The idea behind the court originated at WIPO. The G20 apparently hopes to launch the court by 2012, with Geneva pegged as the likely home.
Update: Got me – this must be an April Fool's joke.
A Columbian blogger has translated my recent posting on ACTA into Spanish.
After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.
After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.
Anyone familiar with BitTorrent will know that this protocol provides some of the best excitement to be found anywhere on the Internet. During the last few hours, up to 100 previously unreleased Michael Jackson songs were leaked and the battle is now on as his representatives try to put the genie back in the bottle.
Anyone familiar with BitTorrent will know that this protocol provides some of the best excitement to be found anywhere on the Internet. During the last few hours, up to 100 previously unreleased Michael Jackson songs were leaked and the battle is now on as his representatives try to put the genie back in the bottle.
Another day, another cautionary tale about how staying at a Holiday Inn Express doesn’t qualify you to practice law.
Enter Jamil Ezzo, an enterprising Internet maven, who runs the website at www.LocatePlasticSurgeon.com.
Mr. Ezzo decided that he should file for a federal trademark
registration on his incredibly creative and original business name,
“Locate Plastic Surgeon,” and in an effort to give his fledgling new
business venture a leg up over the wasteful spenders that were his
cutthroat competition, he figured that he should forego hiring a lawyer
to do it for him. Great plan, Jamil, except that any IP attorney who’s
worth his salt would have told you that your proposed mark is pretty
much worthless and you shouldn’t waste your time or money trying to
protect it.
Well, who needs an expensive, fancy lawyer to tell you, when the
examining attorney at the United States Patent and Trademark Office
will do it for the price of filing? Except that it helps to know what
you are reading when the office action comes back:
Judging from the applicant’s specimen of use, the
services appear to be in the nature of offering a website that allows
users to identify the location of – i.e., locate – surgeons
specializing in plastic surgery. Thus, the mark is merely descriptive
as applied to the services because it describes a function of the
applicant’s website.
Translation: Your mark is lame, and it will be really difficult to
justify giving you the right to exclude everyone in your field from
using the same words in association with their business.
[A]lthough the trademark examining attorney has refused
registration on the Principal Register, applicant may respond to the
stated refusal(s) under Section 2(e)(1) of the Trademark Act by
amending the application to seek registration on the Supplemental
Register.
Translation: We’ll take your money to put your mark in the cheap
seats, but you’re gonna have to prove that the relevant marketplace
identifies your service with the proposed mark before you can hope to
win a claim in federal court.
Mr. Ezzo took the “advice” of his “attorney” and registered his
ultra-awesome mark on the “Supplemental Register” – whatever that is.
Now he thinks he can stop anyone from using the phrase “Locate Plastic
Surgeon” on the internet, and he has filed a complaint in the Middle District of Florida seeking to do just that. His targets: Google, AOL, PlasticSurgery.org (website for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons), PlasticSurgery.com, FindYourPlasticSurgeon.com, and FindCosmeticSurgeons.com – to name a few.
Keeping with his normal business practice, Mr. Ezzo has decided that
he can handle this bit of litigation on his own. He drafted the
complaint himself, if you couldn’t tell. The first eleven pages
comprise large, copied-and-pasted portions of the United States Code –
much of which have nothing to do with Ezzo’s “alleged” cause of action.
His “claims” include fraud (with no indication of the supporting
facts), misrepresentation (without any mention of what was represented
to him), rescission (wait, that’s not a cause of action… it’s a
remedy), and injunction (ditto). What does he want? Only $90M,
representing the lost subscription fees from 5,000 subscribers who
would have found Mr. Ezzo’s site, but for the alleged fraud,
misrepresentation, rescission, and injunction of the defendants. Of
course, that number has been tripled, because this is absolutely an
“exceptional case.”
The only thing “exceptional” about this case is how exceptionally
foolish it was to file. Normally, in trademark cases, the parties bear
their own fees. However, in “exceptional cases,” the prevailing party
may also get an award of attorneys’ fees. If I’m the oddsmaker on this
case, even one of my law students could likely get this thing dismissed
and get the defendants an attorneys’ fees award against Mr. Ezzo. I’d
imagine that Google and AOL are going to have no difficulty bringing a
complete and total smackdown.
Sadly, one consult with a qualified trademark attorney (which might
have been free, if he found the right one) could have saved Mr. Ezzo
lots of time, energy, money, aggravation, and humiliation. He would
have learned that his registration was not worth pursuing, at the
least. At best, he would have avoided filing this laughable lawsuit –
which will probably end with him on the hook for some attorneys’ fees.
For more on the case, see the CMLP’s legal threats database entry, Ezzo v. Google.
(This post was co-authored with Jason Fischer.)
As part of our Torture FOIA case, we were supposed to have received a few weeks ago a list of documents pertaining to the 92 interrogation tapes destroyed by the CIA. Not surprisingly, we didn’t receive anything from the government. We did, however, receive an order from the Court [...]
The European Commission has prepared a set of questions and answers as well as a flowchart to help companies understand when they can and when they cannot send personal data abroad.
Navigation device maker TomTom has agreed to make patent payouts to Microsoft for five years, settling a lawsuit brought against it by the software giant. TomTom said that the settlement does not break any licence terms for the Linux operating system.
The European Commission today delivered an ultimatum to internet firms – improve your approach to privacy online, or face a regulatory clampdown from Brussels.