trademark

A proposed law allowing the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy received a sizable political boost yesterday.

Dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) endorsed the bill in a letter to the U.S. Senate. So did Major League Baseball and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, said new laws are needed to curb access … Read more

Come 2012, confused camera customers might be able to point their browsers to a Web address that looks very different from what's available today: support.canon.

That's because the organization in charge of such names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is planning on a dramatic rewriting of the rules for Web addresses that could demote .com's importance.

Today there are just a few of what are called generic top-level domains--.com, .net, .org, .biz, and .edu, for example. But ICANN wants to open the door to, potentially, hundreds or thousands more of these GTLDs.

That's a big change, especially for those who have a brand to protect on the Internet and were taken by surprise by the virtual land grab that took place with .com addresses in the 1990s. Here's a look at what GTLDs mean now and in the future.

What is a generic top-level domain, and how do I get one? In an Internet address, the top-level domains is what comes after the last period in the main server address. There are two broad types: the generic top-level domains such as .com and country code top-level domains such as .jp for Japan or .de for Germany. With ICANN's expansion, though, the term "generic" is something of a misnomer: it could include not only something like .auto or .hotel, but also branded domains such as .ibm or .safeway. … Read more

When businesses become big, some decide to act big too. They walk into the legal saloon, swagger up to the bar and expect plaudits and favors to come streaming their way.

Sometimes it is for good reason, for they fear that others might trade off the back of their bigness. Sometimes, though, it is just an attempt to live large.

What, then, might one think of the news that Facebook is reportedly not merely attempting to trademark the word "book," but also the word "face"?

The trademark application, seems to seek a rather broad coverage.

TechCrunch reports … Read more

Is it really wise to antagonize the Good Lord? He has, according to the Scriptures, shown an occasional penchant for large-scale destruction.

So why would anyone, let alone a vast electronics retailer, wish to demand that one of his shepherds change his ways? In the case of Best Buy, it seems that the company decided that this one particular shepherd has a mission that steps onto its own hallowed ground.

Father Luke Strand, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is a man who believes that humor and advertising are vital components in ministering to his flock.

So he decked out … Read more

WebKit, the open-source project behind Apple's Safari browser, is a pretty obscure name to ordinary folks. And perhaps Apple wants to keep it that way, judging by Apple's May 18 WebKit trademark application.

WebKit got its start from the open-source KHTML engine for the KDE project's Konqueror browser. (KDE is a user interface software that puts a nicer graphical face on Linux.) Apple brought the project to a wider audience with the Safari browser for Mac OS X, and now Google is doing the same with its Chrome and Android browsers, both also based on WebKit.

In … Read more

Google's U.K. Web mail users can now have an gmail.com e-mail address rather than googlemail.com, after the company settled a long-running trademark dispute with a British research firm.

Google said Tuesday it has come to an agreement with Independent International Investment Research and will begin offering people with googlemail addresses a Gmail address "over the next few months." New U.K. users will be able to sign up to a Gmail account later this week.

Since October 2005, people signing up for an e-mail address with Google have been given a googlemail address as … Read more

Another lawsuit challenging Google's policy of allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on keywords that are also trademarks has been dismissed.

Without comment, Judge Gerald Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia threw out a lawsuit Wednesday filed by language software company Rosetta Stone in a victory for Google before it ever came to trial. Rosetta Stone had originally filed suit hoping to stop Google from selling trademarked keywords to companies that did not hold the rights to those trademarks, a practice which Rosetta Stone argued has confused consumers and harmed its brand.

Similar cases have been filed … Read more

A New York appeals court has ruled in eBay's favor in its longstanding legal dispute with Tiffany & Co. over whether the auction giant is responsible for policing the sale of counterfeit goods. The legendary jewelry company had alleged that trademark law requires eBay to keep tabs on the legitimacy of products sold on its platform and that the sale of counterfeit goods amounts to false advertising on eBay's part; the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that this is not the case.

"The decision is a critically important victory for online consumers who … Read more

When Apple first announced the iPad, it did not own the trademark on the name. Now, after some negotiating with Fujitsu, it does, and just in time for its touch-screen tablet to go on sale next week.

The blog PatentAuthority tracked down the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office document Friday that shows Fujitsu turned the iPad trademark over to Apple officially on March 17. Though it's not disclosed, we can assume that Fujitsu was compensated in some way for assigning that trademark, which it has owned since 2003, to Apple.

Here's the document showing Apple's ownership … Read more