"The intellectual property issue is another story we’ll get into, but this is basically the mob storming the castle saying, 'We’re here too, bitch, deal with it.'"

"You guys flaunted it and made it seem like we never get to be part of this, and now we get to be part of this fair and square."

Said Bethenny Frankel — a "Real Housewives" star — quoted in "Hermès tight-lipped on Wirkin bag, Walmart’s dupe of the Birkin/Walmart’s copy of the vastly more expensive and exclusive Birkin handbag has been praised on social media for breaking through the snobbery of high fashion" (London Times).

Hermès does not sell the Birkin online and until recently maintained a months-long waiting list, helping to protect its exclusivity. Hermès stores are only allowed to buy a select number of the bags bi-annually and the style of bags being delivered is rarely known before they arrive.... Hermès is yet to publicly comment on the Wirkin. Legal experts say the Birkin bag’s logo, its shape and design, are registered trademarks and therefore have legal protection....

Did Mickey Mouse just enter the public domain?

"An early Walt Disney movie featuring the first appearance of Mickey Mouse is among the copyrighted works from 1928 moving into the public domain on Jan. 1, 2024....  'What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film,' [says Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor and intellectual property scholar]. That means people can creatively reuse only the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie. Not the Mickey Mouse in the 1940 movie Fantasia. Nor the one on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.... New versions of Mickey Mouse remain under copyright. Copyright applies to creative characters, movies, books, plays, songs and more. And as it happens, Mickey Mouse is also trademarked.... 'And of course, trademark law has no end, adds Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji.... As long as the mark remains distinctive in the supply of goods and services, the owner of the trademark gets to protect that trademark. 'It's something copyright scholars like myself have been concerned about.... This effective undermining of the public domain by allowing trademark law to effectively extend the life of a copyrighted work.....'"

From "'Steamboat Willie' is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?" (NPR).

The most NPR part of that article is telling us that in "Steamboat Willie," as opposed to later versions of Mickey, "his roots in the blackface minstrel shows of the time are more apparent."

ADDED: From a 2019 Snopes article, "Was Mickey Mouse Modeled After a Racist Caricature Named 'Jigaboo'? Mickey Mouse may have a connection to minstrel shows, but he wasn't based on a racist 'Jigaboo' character":

Taco John's abandons its "Taco Tuesday" trademark (charmingly).

In May, @TacoBell petitioned the @uspto to cancel @tacojohns' trademark of the term "#TacoTuesday," arguing it "should be freely available to all who make, sell, eat, and celebrate tacos." That trademark has now been abandoned. 🌮https://t.co/ABuEfyGyjs pic.twitter.com/63cnrfrhi8

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPai) August 2, 2023

"Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights to the same letter."

"X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges - and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future. 'There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,' said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries."

Reuters reports.

If it's so widely used, isn't that just evidence that it's just not trademarkable? Musk just needs to be able to use it, not to prevent others from using it. 

I'm not a trademark expert. Just putting the ideas out there for discussion.

We can talk about trademark law, but — aside from law — what about the ludicrous overuse of X in naming commercial items? I think it's liked because it's close to saying "sex." Better than sex, really, because "s" is the most troublesome letter to say.

"Well, I went to a law school where I didn't learn any law," said Justice Alito, who went to Yale.

He was responding to Lisa S. Blatt, the lawyer for Jack Daniel's, who'd just said — transcript here — "Justice Alito, I don't know how old you are, but you went to law school, you're very smart, you're analytical, you have hindsight bias, and maybe you know something...."

It was a gratuitous shot at Yale Law School, because Blatt wasn't arguing about Alito's knowledge of law compared to that of ordinary people, but reacting to his assertion that no reasonable person would think Jack Daniel's had authorized a dog toy shaped like a bottle of Jack Daniel's but bearing references to dog urine and feces. He'd said:

Trademark infringement?

 

Oral argument today.

Here's Ronald Mann, at SCOTUSblog, with "Dog toy poking fun at Jack Daniel’s leads to dispute over parody exception to trademark protections":

"It was only later in the 19th century, with the Romantic cult of the author and the rise of academic textual scholarship, that the notion of a sacrosanct authorial vision began to take hold."

"But even then, such standards tended to apply only to established authors. The most common English editions of many 19th-century French novels were still heavily bowdlerized.... In comparison with the familiar sanitized versions, Dumas’s original ['Three Musketeers'] is an obscure, slightly seedy French romance...  The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether it is ever reasonable [to make changes] but who should be able to do so — and in what spirit and with what purpose.... In the Dahl case... it was a company treating Dahl’s beloved creations as if they were merely its assets....  I, for one, do not believe that philistines should be allowed to buy up authors’ estates and convert their works into 'Star Wars'-style franchises, as Netflix now seems to be doing, having purchased the Roald Dahl Story Company...."

 
Writes Matthew Walther, the editor of a Catholic literary journal, in "The Truth About the ‘Censorship’ of Roald Dahl" (NYT).

"Days after musicians Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear performed their Grammy-winning Unofficial Bridgerton Musical to a sold-out audience at the Kennedy Center..."

"... Netflix is suing them for 'blatant infringement' of the company’s rights to the popular period drama. In a complaint filed Friday (July 29) in D.C. federal court, Netflix accused the duo of piggybacking on 'the creative work and hard-earned success' of hundreds of artists and staffers behind Bridgerton – using the company’s copyrights and trademarks without permission to build a 'brand for themselves.'...  Barlow & Bear launched the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical on TikTok, eventually garnering millions of likes. The viral songs were eventually released as an album, which won best musical theater album at the 2022 Grammy Awards in April...."

From "Netflix Sues ‘Unofficial Bridgerton Musical’ Creators Days After Sold-Out Live Show/The streamer says it told Abigail Barlow & Emily Bear 'time and time again" that the Grammy-winning musical was not authorized'" (Billboard).

I didn't watch the Netflix show. I had no interest at all. But I did look up the "Unofficial Bridgerton Musical" album. I can understand how Netflix is aggrieved that its words have been lifted, but I think the cooler thing to do would have been to embrace Barlow and Bear and to be grateful for their contribution to the cultural clout of the the show. Barlow and Bear showed appreciation and did something that added dimension and color to the fading TV series. Netflix behaved in an old-timey corporate fashion and missed what was for them an opportunity, the big dummies. 

Here's the album on Spotify:

 

"I think on its face, the ice cream that Walmart attempted to sell at best feels performative and exploitative..."

"... in part because Juneteenth is a holiday that signals celebration of liberation, and this feels like an empty symbol rather than a meaningful gesture that companies the size of Walmart could have made to the Black community across the United States in celebration of Juneteenth.... I think that it’s really in the spirit of Juneteenth to ensure that they are doing things that are meaningful for the advancement of both their Black employees and their Black consumers and also where there are avenues for that—even investments in small Black-owned businesses. Juneteenth was once an obscure holiday... As it’s getting renewed attention and visibility, I hope that companies will find ways to mark the historic significance of the holiday and not larger performative gestures like what we are seeing here with Walmart and other companies."

Said Timothy Welbeck, an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Africology and African American Studies and acting director of the Center for Anti-racism Research at Temple University, quoted in "Learning from Walmart’s Juneteenth marketing mistake/Timothy Welbeck, acting director of the Center for Anti-racism Research, believes companies must develop more meaningful ways to observe the occasion rather than capitalizing off the holiday commercially" (Temple Now).

"Real-life quidditch, inspired by the magical game in 'Harry Potter,' is changing its name, citing author J.K. Rowling's 'anti-trans positions in recent years.'"

NBC News reports. 

I can't imagine why anyone who doesn't love JK Rowling would want to play this game, which looks perfectly idiotic without that love. These people are holding messy, ragged brooms between their legs. Take away the author's magical aura and you've got to think, what the hell are we doing?!

“For the last year or so, both leagues have been quietly collecting research to prepare for the move and been in extensive discussions with each other and trademark lawyers regarding how we can work together to make the name change as seamless as possible,” Major League Quidditch Commissioner Amanda Dallas said in the release. 

Oh! So they stole the intellectual property?

The leagues say there are a few reasons for the name change. Among them is that the name "quidditch" is trademarked by Warner Bros., which produced the "Harry Potter" movies, and as a result the sport's expansion has been limited in its sponsorship and broadcast opportunities....

They just took the name, appropriated the author's reputation, and now they'd like to look virtuous as the drop it, but they need to drop it because they never legitimately acquired it in the first place. Just give up, people. 

This must have started as lighthearted fun, but it's all over now. Take your silly brooms and sweep yourselves off the public stage. 

"The pro-appropriation people will say, 'well, Johns is an artist and anything that Johns does is going to be transformative.'"

Said the intellectual property lawyer, quoted in "How did this teenager’s drawing of his knee wind up in a Jasper Johns painting at the Whitney?/A new work debuting in a major exhibition raises complex questions about artistic license and appropriation" (WaPo). 

The teenager, Jéan-Marc Togodgue, had made an anatomical drawing of a knee (because, he says, he wanted to understand an injury to his knee). The artist saw the drawing hanging in Togodgue's doctor's office and copied it as part of a painting. It's painted to look like the original drawing is taped to the painting. 

Johns wrote to Togodgue, "I would like you to be pleased with the idea and I hope that you will visit my studio to see what I have made." 

An artist named Brendan O’Connell — O'Connell's son is friends with Togodgue — called attention to the copyright issue: “This isn’t like him doing the Savarin coffee cup or doing some pop appropriation like I do.... This is somebody’s work that he directly copied."  

In the era of Black Lives Matter, [he] found it particularly offensive that a White artist from the segregated South was using the work of an African teenager in this way.

Cease and desist!

Yesterday when we were shooting, these industrious young entrepreneurs opened a lemonade stand near our set and called it a “Clerks Jr.” It totally worked, resulting in our crew spending much money there. Then I called my lawyer and sent all the kids cease-and-desist orders. pic.twitter.com/7t75z1vcqQ

— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) August 3, 2021

"'Don’t Fauci My Florida,' read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations..."

"... new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target.... While discussing the Florida budget this summer, DeSantis said his state’s rosy financial outlook would not have been possible 'if we had followed Fauci.' 'Instead we followed freedom,' he said. His campaign’s 'Team DeSantis' Twitter account announced the new merchandise Monday. The Fauci items are listed alongside 'Keep Florida Free' hats and red koozies that take aim at face coverings with a DeSantis quote: 'How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?'"

From "DeSantis sells ‘Don’t Fauci My Florida’ merch as new coronavirus cases near highest in nation" (WaPo).

This campaign merchandise is viral — viral 2 ways. 1. It's about coronavirus, 2. It gets DeSantis haters to carry his message for him. Those haters may think they're attacking him, but try as they might, they're helping him more than they're hurting him.

As for beer koozies, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've drunk anything straight from a can in my entire life. I'll drink from a bottle, but not a can. I follow freedom, and I choose not to challenge my face with sharp edges of aluminum. I'll put a mask on my face if it's genuinely necessary, but I expect care to be taken in dictating when that is. 

Anyway, I'm not the market for any koozie, let alone a beer-specific koozie with a political slogan. I don't drink from cans, I almost never drink beer, I never wear or wield items emblazoned with politicized writing, and I would never casually expose the general public — which includes children — to aggressive words like "How the hell...?" 

But I did get a little interested in the word "koozie," which to my ear sounds dirty or insulting. Is it some combination of "cool" and "cozy"? I was interested in the etymology! Now, I'm reading Wikipedia. But it doesn't give the origin of the word, so I will maintain my belief — graphically stated at Urban Dictionary (definition #3) — that it started with a vagina metaphor.

Cop cues up a Taylor Swift song so the video a man is making of him will run afoul of YouTube's copyright enforcement and get censored.

But here's the video on YouTube, where it's been since July 1st: 

I found that via "An officer played a Taylor Swift song to keep his recording off YouTube. Instead it went viral" (WaPo).

"We regard the Lesbian Avengers bomb logo and activist history as the intellectual and moral property of the Lesbian Avengers."

"No individual or member has the legal right to license it for profit. Our organization and movement then as now oppose the commodification and co-optation of our lives and history, what some today call 'Rainbow Capitalism.' We oppose commercial licensing of the Lesbian Avenger name, logo, or history – then, now and in the future."

From "AN OPEN LETTER from the NY 90s LESBIAN AVENGERS to the GAP" (PDF dated June 18, 2020), which I learned about reading "The Lesbian Avengers Will Not Be Commodified/At least, not by the Gap" (NYT).

The Gap has taken the shirt off its website, but it should be noted that it didn't simply appropriate the design. It bought it from the designer, Carrie Moyer. Moyer said:

"To be honest, at first, I didn’t even think they were going to want to use it because it’s more provocative than how they’re attempting to depict gay people."

Yes, the usual idea is the rainbow. A bomb with a lit fuse is pretty inconsistent:

But it's a bomb from women, so sexism — the idea that women are gentle and sweet — pads the message.

The Lesbian Avengers have been around since 1992. "Avengers" was chosen out of love for the Diana Rigg, star of the TV show "The Avengers." 

Moyer saw the little bomb icon at the bottom of a leaflet that somebody else designed for the group. Moyer then chose to put the bomb in the center of a logo with the lettering of the group's name around it. The group voted to adopt the logo. It had more to do with wanting to look like they had a sense of humor than that they were threatening violence. 

Quite aside from the issue of the group wanting to control its own logo, the Gap shirt has the names of the founders of the group on the back. I suppose the Gap people thought these women would just appreciate the support and publicity! 

The Gap "bypassed love-is-love platitudes to sell a memory of a community’s radical roots — for $34.95." Presumably, it's worth lots more now that it's been withdrawn. And yet the logo is out there everywhere, and anyone can get it printed on a white T-shirt for a lot less than $35. What failed was the Gap's attempt to put that branding on itself. Why the Gap would want to be associated with vengeance and bombing can only be answered by understanding sexism: It's just girls fighting.

"I feel like it’s fucked up they have so much power they can get shoes cancelled. Freedom of expression gone out the window."

Said Lil Nas X, quoted in "Lil Nas X Satan Shoes will be recalled as part of settlement with Nike/Nike sued MSCHF Product Studio for trademark infringement over the black-and-red, devil-themed sneakers" (The Guardian). 

Can't you make shoes out of shoes — decorate them, bedazzle them — and then sell them? We won't get an official legal answer, because Lil Nas settled the case. Nike retains the threat of litigation over anyone who tries to use their shoes as a foundation for a fashion/art project. 

Lil Nas loses nothing other than the opportunity to fund litigation to establish the principle he speaks as though he cares about. But the shoes that were made — all 666 pairs of them — were sold in the first minute, and anyone who bought the shoes can now get a refund of the purchase price — $1018 — but no one will do that, because they're notorious, and they are clearly more valuable now that they've become so famous.  I see on eBay that a pair recently sold for $5,000, so only an ignoramus would participate in the recall.

Did anyone ever really believe that devil-themed sneakers were outrageous? Kids wear devil costumes at Halloween. The devil is not a big enough villain to make anything edgy in 2021... or in 1951. 

But Big Sneaker put its foot down, and ooh!, it's almost illicit to possess these things.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Can you tell whether it's elevating and not racist to compare Black Lives Matter artists to cavemen?

I'm trying to read "New York’s Sidewalk Prophets Are Heirs of the Lascaux Cave Artisans/What street art adorning boarded-up storefronts tells us about our shared political realities and the ways our stories are connected. A critic’s tour deciphers the signs and symbols" in the New York Times.

Maybe to answer my question you need to know more about the racial identification of the writer, whose name is Seph Rodney. I'm just going to give you a sample of the prose:

What became apparent to me is that in the intervening millenniums between those cave paintings and the killing of George Floyd, the messages we share, like the sociopolitical circumstance that impel them, have become more complex. Now street artists take account of the qualified legal immunity protecting police officers, the Black Lives Matter movement and the ramifications of a dysfunctional democracy, among other realities, using a well-developed visual language of cultural memes that illustrate the ideological battles among regional, racial and cultural factions. When we see the image of thin, green-skinned, bipedal beings with teardrop-shaped black apertures for eyes, we typically read “alien.” But when I see the image of such a creature holding a sign that reads “I can’t breathe,” I grok an urgent message: Even aliens visiting from light years away understand the plight of Black people in the United States because this situation is so obviously dire.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jamie said:

I stopped processing his prose before he said "grok," but woke back up when I got there. I hate when people who aren't Heinlein use "grok" to connote their deep understanding... Those people almost invariably missed the point of Stranger In a Strange Land.

The OED has an entry for "grok" — U.S. slang, "arbitrary formation" by Robert A. Heinlein, from 1961. It is defined as "To understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" or " To empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment." The 2 quotes from the book that are in the OED are: "Smith had been aware of the doctors but had grokked that their intentions were benign" and "Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers." The OED also gives these quotes:

1968 Playboy June 80 He met her at an acid-rock ball and she grokked him, this ultracool miss loaded with experience and bereft of emotion.

"Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people...."

"Now the Harriet Tubman thing is, I’m sick of this black iconography being used by white organization for us to look up to and say 'This is us.' I do not… I own 100% of the Yeezy trademark, but up until now Adidas was getting 85%. And now after this, they either out of business with me or they going to get 10%. I decided not to not make it 15. I decided to make it 10."

Said Kanye West at a rally in South Carolina yesterday. Read the whole transcript. I just wanted to get the part about Harriet Tubman out verbatim, because I'm seeing things like, "Kanye West criticizes Harriet Tubman at his political rally."

He's criticizing white people for taking advantage of black people one way or another. He's not criticizing Harriet Tubman. He's criticizing white people for using Harriet Tubman to show off what they think is their own virtue!

And he's defining slavery broadly to include all sorts of exploitation of black people by white people, including Adidas taking such a large percentage of the proceeds of the shoes they make and sell. He only got 15% for letting them use his name! That's on a continuum with slavery, no?

With oral argument by telephone and the Justices subjected to a protocol of asking their questions in order of seniority, the long-silent Justice Thomas asked 2 questions.

Thomas has been on the Court longer than any of the Justices, but the Chief Justice is regarded as first in seniority. That makes Thomas second in seniority, and therefore the second to have the opportunity to speak under this new approach.

I'm reading the report at Fox News, which notes that Thomas had, before this morning, only spoken twice at oral argument since 2006.

Thomas's questions today were about whether Booking.com could trademark "Booking.com": "Could Booking acquire an 800 number that's a vanity number, 1-800-booking for example, that is similar to 1-800-plumbing, which is a registered mark?... I'd like you to compare this to Goodyear.... In Goodyear, you had a generic term, but you also had an added term, such as company or inc, which any company could use. With Booking here there could only be one domain address dot com, so this would seem to be more analogous to the 1-800 numbers which are also individualized."

The new approach is much more polite and orderly. Obviously, the usual approach of Justices breaking in and attempting to dominate would be horrible on a telephone conference call. Maybe this experiment in order will affect how the Justices go forward with their courtroom theatrics if and when the social distancing ends.

Data from internet-connected thermometers show that social distancing may be working.

From "Restrictions Are Slowing Coronavirus Infections, New Data Suggest/A database of daily fever readings shows that the numbers declined as people disappeared indoors" (NYT):

The company, Kinsa Health, which produces internet-connected thermometers, first created a national map of fever levels on March 22 and was able to spot the trend within a day. Since then, data from the health departments of New York State and Washington State have buttressed the finding, making it clear that social distancing is saving lives.

Kinsa’s thermometers upload the user’s temperature readings to a centralized database; the data enable the company to track fevers across the United States.... Kinsa has more than one million thermometers in circulation and has been getting up to 162,000 daily temperature readings since Covid-19 began spreading in the country....

Kind of an invasion of privacy — voluntary self-invasion by the users of the thermometers — but this is really interesting. Here's the trend in my county:



Here's Manhattan:



The blue line is where Kinsa would expect the trend to be in a normal flu season. When the orange line goes red, that's "atypical" in that it doesn't correspond to the usual pattern of the flu, so it might be inferred that's the coronavirus.

As of noon Wednesday, the company’s live map showed fevers holding steady or dropping almost universally across the country, with two prominent exceptions. One was in a broad swath of New Mexico, where the governor had issued stay-at-home orders only the day before, and in adjacent counties in Southern Colorado....

By Friday morning, fevers in every county in the country were on a downward trend, depicted in four shades of blue on the map.

“I’m very impressed by this,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine expert at Vanderbilt University. “It looks like a way to prove that social distancing works. But it does shows that it takes the most restrictive measures to make a real difference.”...

The turning point [in Manhattan] began on March 16, the day schools were closed. Bars and restaurants were closed the next day, and a stay-at-home order took effect on March 20. By March 23, new fevers in Manhattan were below their March 1 levels....

“People need to know their sacrifices are helping,” said Inder Singh, founder of Kinsa.... Mr. Singh said he had approached the C.D.C. about using his data as part of its own flu surveillance, but agency officers had insisted on him giving up the rights to his data if they did, and he refused....

Well, there's an issue. People are giving the company their data, and the company wants to own it, even when the fate of a nation is in the balance. Maybe Trump can iron out that kink. He seems to focus on the interface between government and private business. Anyway, it's great to get this view of things, and nice of people to sacrifice their privacy to produce this fantastic overview of the health of the country and the effectiveness of the social distancing measures.