Designed for CPAs whose clients include film, music and production studios and related businesses; as well as business managers, attorneys, bankers, CPAs, CFOs and controllers who work in the entertainment industry.
Entertainment Industry Conference
Lucky’s Lounge, 355 Congress Street, 8 pm. We will be sharing the room with ‘Meet the Bloggers IIXLV.”
In honor of the INTA Annual Meeting, I was asked to host Blawg Review this week (neither me nor Blawg Review having learned his lesson the last time). Once there were so few IP blogs, the name THE TRADEMARK BLOG was available. Now, there are so many, one of the few names left is ZAPATOS! The Doctirne of Foreign Equivalents Blog!!
If you do want to start a new IP blog, I would be happy to search and clear the name for you. Here are some of the names that are taken:
SORT OF DESCRIPTIVE
Pam Chestek’s Property, Intangible which, I think, under-appreciated.
If I didn’t link to Likelihood of Confusion, Ron would only link to it in the comments anyway.
Tech and Marketing Law by Prof Goldman.
Current Trademark Legal Literature
Nolo’s Patent, Copyright & Trademark Blog
Internet Cases by TWiL co-host Evan Brown.
TTABlog. I don’t read it but I do call up John Welch everyday and ask him legal questions. Really incisive coverage of the temperature this week.
COINED OR ARBITRARY
IPKAT: certainly one of the better source of illustrations of cats and cat-puns.
Spicy IP (well, maybe suggestive)
AZRights (perhaps suggestive)
Some of Ron’s stuff.
IPWars (extra credit as WAR is the author’s intials)
SUGGESTIVE BUT OBSCURE
Legal Fuckin’ Satyricon
Herrera on Cigar Law
By the way, if you check up on Bill Platry’s blog
every day, you will be rewarded maybe twice a year.
Every law firm blog
GEOGRAPHICALLY DESCRIPTIVE (Unregistrable but shrewd SEO-wise)
Seattle Trademark Lawyer
Canadian Trademark Blog,
The Australian Trade Marks Law Blog (which is written by a platypus),
The German Trademark Law In A Nutshell,
Pittsburght Trademark Lawyer
and the Law Vegas Trademark Attoreny.
Chicago IP Litigation Blog
What with all the receptions I’ve been attending this weekend, it’s very possible that I’ve left your trademark-oriented blog off this list. Email me and I’ll be happy to add you, unless you’re one of the two guys who are clearly attempting to rip me off.
Where can a lot of us watch the last episode of LOST?
BlogFest, which everyone else insists on calling Meet the Bloggers, is Monday at Lcuky’s Lounge at 8. I will be autographing copies of the blog. John Welch will be handing out squeezy balls. If you would like to meet up and say hello and can’t make BlogFest, then drop a line to marty at schwimmerlegal dot com. I’ll be appearing all week. Try the veal.
Most of you are familiar with ICANN’s new gTLD process. Many trademark owners are contemplating applying for top level domains reflecting their brands (“Dot Brands”).
Operating a gTLD registry will require expertise as well as an infrastructure that meets ICANN’s standards. Importantly, ICANN is evaluating its policy of registry-registrar separation. This could mean that if you apply for and receive .YOURBRAND, you may own and control the registry that manages the TLD, but you may have to use non-owned and controlled entities to be the registrar(s) that allocate the .YOURBRAND domain names, even if those names are for internal use only and no names are allocated to the public.
To assist brand-owners in meeting these and other requirements, I will be providing legal consulting services in conjunction with Com Laude and its sister company Valideus, which will be providing business and technical consulting services (brochure reproduced below). Com Laude, an accredited registrar specializing in managing domain name portfolios for large brand owners, has developed a “white label” registrar and registry solution for applicants for Dot Brands.
We will be advising on ‘Dot Brand’ applications to ICANN (as well as on brand-protection issues arising from the new gTLDs, applicable to any trademark owner).
I will be attending th INTA Annual Meeting in Boston, as will the principals of Com Laude and Valideus, Nick Wood and Lorna Gradden. If your company is exploring filing for a Dot Brand TLD, please contact me.
Valideus Leaflet NEW
I started the Trademark Blog eight years ago today. Bret Fausett was publishing the ICANN Blog at the time and I asked him for advice, and he recommended Radio Userland software. Nathan Hoover helped me install it. The first week, Ernest Svenson, Denise Howell and Tom Mighell, all lawyer-bloggers, linked to me, because they viewed legal-blogging not as a new type of brochure, but as a cause to be promoted (it’s sorta both).
At that time there were not many blogs and every blogger read every other blogger’s work. After two weeks, a gossip/fashion blog wrote: “I came across the Trademark Blog. At first I wondered “why?” but now I’m strangely fascinated.” Which describes my reaction as well.
Once I was reporting a case in which the judge used the word ‘chutzpah’ which I described as an old Latin legal term for ‘unmitigated gaul.’ Someone studying for a PhD at UCLA emailed to inform me that chutzpah was in fact a Yiddish word.
At some point, Dennis Kennedy, who awards the Blawggies, re-named the Best Single Subject Law Blog award after the Trademark Blog, as a polite way of excluding it from future consideration.
The Trademark Blog used to be on the ABA Top 100 Law Blog list, then fell off once there were more than 100 Law Blogs.
According to AVVO, the Trademark Blog is the 25th most read legal blog.
The micro-blog version on Twitter (@trademarkblog) has 744 followers, however many of those are people trying to sell something.
According to Scribd, legal documents embedded on the Blog have been accessed a quarter of a million times. That stat at least hints at some usefulness to all this.
If you have read all 4316 blog entries over the past eight years, then you probably would be somewhat informed as to Trademark, Copyright and Domain Name law. If you have written all 4316 entries, then you would be me.
The New York State Bar, to which I am a proud to be admitted, believes that blogs are advertisements, and attempts to regulate them as such. So on that note I conclude by pointing out that I am a lawyer providing spirited service at popular prices. I rent out by the hour, day, or longer, according to the taste of the customer.
My partner, Paul Fakler, successfully represented various music publishers including Warner/Chappell, Peermusic and Bug Music in obtaining a preliminary injunction in the CD Cal, enjoining several websites from displaying and distributing song lyrics without authorization.
Decision Prelim Peermusic v Live Universe Lyrics