U.K.: Fast-food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken has backed off its attempt to browbeat the proprietress of the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire into no longer billing her traditional Christmas dinner as a “Family Feast”. In a letter from its lawyers, Freshfields, KFC had claimed trademark ownership of the phrase. (Will Pavia, “Fast food giant is licked in battle with pub”, Times Online, May 11; Weigel, Reason “Hit and Run”, May 10).
Posts Tagged ‘trademarks’
“The Microsoft of kickball”?
Apparently kickball isn’t just for elementary school students anymore: the website DCist reports that a lawsuit filed last February by the World Adult Kickball Association (“WAKA”) against rival adult kickball league (I’m having trouble reporting this without snickering) DC Kickball is still kicking around in the federal courts a year later.
The original complaint doesn’t appear to be online, but the Washington City Paper provided more details last year, including:
The complaint accuses DCKickball founder Carter Rabasa of copyright infringement for unauthorized use of WAKA’s co-ed kickball rules, including “the clearly unique requirement that there be 4 men AND 4 women at a minimum to play” and for mandating that “players must be at least 21 years old.” No other specific rules or intellectual-property thefts are mentioned, but the suit points out that David Fischer, a volunteer director for DCKickball, was previously a player for the WAKA team “Scoregasm.”
The suit also accuses Rabasa of defamation, based on his calling WAKA “the Microsoft of kickball” in a 2005 Washington City Paper story (“Kickball Wars,” Cheap Seats, 5/13) and his additional comments in a subsequent Wall Street Journal article. Those comments, the suit alleges, incited a kickballer to post “WAKA bites it” on the DCKickball Web site.
To the extent this represents the entire complaint (there also seems to be an unspecified trademark claim as well), it appears utterly meritless. You can’t copyright the rules of a game (although you can copyright the specific wording used), and in any case, neither of the rules cited sound particularly original. And “the Microsoft of kickball” may be insulting to a Macintosh fan, but is not defamatory. These hurdles don’t seem to faze WAKA, though; the company is suing its much smaller competitor for at least $350,000.
But WAKA is apparently very aggressive; it has reportedly sent out cease-and-desist letters to at least two other competitors, according to the City Paper article, accusing them of violating its intellectual property, trade secrets (!), and a non-compete clause (for an unpaid volunteer).
And since “turn the other cheek” is not one of the canons of legal ethics, DC Kickball has countersued for violations of federal and DC antitrust law.
Seriously, adults play kickball? Seriously?
April 19 roundup
- University of Maine official files emotional-distress suit against students who distributed truthful information about him, says Eugene Volokh [@ eponymous]
- You’d think kids at hospitals have enough woe already without snatching away the chocolate shakes and toy-prize meals that might brighten their day [Dr. Charles via KevinMD]
- Keep your eye on just-being-released documentary A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, directed by Eric Chaikin who did the excellent Word Wars [more]
- Flying-imams lawsuit continues to generate plenty of controversy [Malkin, NY Sun, Saunders, Smerconish, Zumwalt @ NYT]
- Former ATLA president Roxanne Conlin has named her website SomePeopleJustNeedToBeSued.com; no one seems to have posted online the story of how Iowans gave her the nickname Taxanne;
- UCP has this useful guide to the state of current knowledge about cerebral palsy (via Fumento, who’s quite unsparing toward John Edwards on the topic)
- Trial lawyers launch indignant crusade against AOL (more examples) over this bit of innocuous fluff on wacky warning labels;
- Blue-ribbon excuses: woman blames shoplifting on irritable bowel syndrome [AP/NBC6.net]
- Lawyers in Alberta, Canada, challenge as unconstitutional province’s limitation on cash for soft-tissue injury in car crashes [CBC]
- Ruling expected later this spring in infringement complaint by meatpacker Hormel against “Spam Arrest” email product [Coleman, Seattle Trademark Lawyer, Jeff Kiger @ Rochester, Minn. Post-Bulletin, documents; see Jul. 9, 2003]
- After teenage admirer of bin Laden flies small plane into Tampa skyscraper, his family sues blaming his Accutane acne medication [five years ago on Overlawyered]
That syllable is trademarked? D’oh!
Twentieth-Century Fox has a trademark for “the spoken word ‘D’oh'” (popularized by Homer Simpson’s annoyed grunts) though the docket indicates that they have not yet filed a statement of use; the USPTO kids’ page, however, indicates that that syllable, along with many other sounds, are trademarked.
February 22 roundup
- Update to Jan. 5 post: “Gifties” lose t-shirt battle. Amber Taylor is not impressed by Posner’s opinion, though. [Above the Law; Taylor]
- Update to our earlier odometer class action; turns out SAE gives odometers a 4% leeway, so Honda is paying millions for following industry standard. Nissan is still fighting the suit, and other manufacturers will likely be hit. [Gannett/Asbury Park Press]
- $12M for suicide despite hospital workers putting themselves in danger in unsuccessful attempt to prevent death [Birmingham News]
- Electric slide inventor sues YouTubers who perform dance wrong. [CNet (h/t LN)]
- Now the NFL wants to trademark “The Big Game.” [Schwimmer; earlier on Overlawyered]
- NAM blog on punitive damages, likes what I have to say. [NAM blog]
- “Kiss life sciences goodbye if lawsuit bills are passed.” [Detroit News via NAM blog; Manhattan Institute]
- “When Flirting at Work Is Flirting With Trouble” [New York Times]
- AG Lockyer’s office hid millions of dollars of giveaways to trial lawyer donors. [Point of Law roundup of links]
- Maybe it’s time to stop calling myself a fifth-string talking head and recognize that I’m a fourth-string talking head. [Financial Times; Forbes.com; Madison County Record]
Overzealous Trademark Enforcement Files: National Pork Board
A breastfeeding activist promotes, inter alia, t-shirts with the slogan “The other white milk.” This has the National Pork Board, with its slogan “The other white meat,” up in arms, and a Faegre & Benson attorney issued a ceast-and-desist letter. The shirt wasn’t a big seller (and CafePress quickly acceded to the threat), so it’s really not about the money, but Jennifer Laycock isn’t happy about the bullying (h/t W.C.).
The Big Game
Notice how in the last few years all the advertising has started referring to the mysterious “Big Game”? That’s because the NFL has sicced lawyers on marketers who refer to the “Super Bowl” without paying merchandising fees to the NFL, including suing Las Vegas casinos that offered Super Bowl parties or special weekend rates for the Super Bowl or contest promoters that offered Super Bowl tickets. (Eriq Gardner, “Super Bowl, Super Trademarks: Protecting the NFL’s IP”, Hollywood Reporter Esq., Jan. 29 via Lattman).
(Update: Frequent commenter Deoxy points us to this similarly-themed Indianapolis Star story.)
Those new referee uniforms the NFL implemented this year have a similar intellectual property provenance. The NFL apparently was concerned at the spate of advertising that used referees in the generic referee stripes, and decided to create a unique look that it could slap a trademark on and potentially market later.
“iPhone” iPWNed?
December 18 isn’t a typical day for new-product announcements, but Linksys announced a new VOIP phone today. The timing makes more sense when one realizes that Apple was about to announce an iPod-compatible cell phone in January, a product that was widely called “iPhone” in the press, but that Linksys owned the “iPhone” trademark since 1996. But without a product using the trademark, Linksys would not have been able to hold on to the name. By preempting the name, Linksys will either be able to extract rents from Apple on a now valuable trademark or force Apple to spend millions creating a new name for the product that doesn’t have the advantage of the brand extension from Apple’s “iMac” and “iPod.” (“The Working Guy” blog; Gizmodo blog (and followup ) (h/t WF)).
Update: Barney parody needn’t come down
Lyons Partnership, which owns the rights to the children’s character Barney, has backed off its threats against the proprietor of a parody website that portrays the lumbering purple dinosaur as evil (see Sept. 6). (Dawn C. Chmielewski, “Happy ending? Suit over Barney parody is settled”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29).
Washington Redskins nickname deemed offensive
So Native American activists are trying — again — to get it invalidated as a trademark. (Jeremy T. Elman, “Can Trademark Law Help Minority Groups Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?”, Law.com, Oct. 12).