Russell’s letter begins: “Quite honestly when I first received your letter I truly had to go to the site you provided to learn of this band. Sorry. After Elvis, the Beatles and the Beach Boys my love of music leans to country.” She recounts the history of the shop and the name’s origin in a nickname hung on the sisters by their late brother. And she closes: “Right now I am at a loss as to what we could possibly call ourselves that could emulate why we are ’Twisted Sisters Coffee Shop’ with our logo of a tornado coming out of a ruby red coffee cup. We are open to Mr. French’s ideas for us.”

Photo from jkwoo

“We expect that any entity that infringes on the rights of our client compensate it for unauthorized use,” the lawyer, Clare Neumann, wrote on May 20, requesting “an accounting of all gross revenues generated during the period when the I ♥ NY® Trademark was used” to help her set the appropriate penalty.

As Respondent puts it, expressing support and devotion to Ron Paul’s political ideals is a legitimate interest that does not require Complainant’s authorization or approval. Moreover, Respondent’s legitimate interest in the Domain Name is strong because the site provides a place for political speech, which is at the heart of what the United States Constitution’s First Amendment is designed to protect. In this way, the Panel is persuaded by Respondent’s arguments and evidence that Respondent is making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the Domain Name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish any trademark at issue. Moreover, Respondent has submitted evidence that there are multiple, very clear disclaimers on the website to which the Domain Name links, indicating that the site is not Complainant’s official site. In regards to Complainant’s arguments that the website is actually a “pretext for commercial advantage”, the Panel finds the website linked to the Domain Name is primarily a noncommercial service, while the products advertised and sold are ancillary to the site’s primary purpose as a source of news and information about Ron Paul, and serving as political forum. Moreover, Respondent’s use meets the criteria for a nominative fair use, as stated in a number of UDRP cases.

Finally, related to Respondent’s second main point, there is no evidence that Respondent has attempted to corner the market of domain names to prevent Complainant from reflecting his alleged RON PAUL mark in a domain name. To the contrary, the evidence indicates that in 2013 Respondent offered to give Complainant the Domain Name for free.

Respondent has requested, based on the evidence presented, that the Panel make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. In view of the unique facts of this case, in which the evidence demonstrates that Respondent offered to give the Domain Name to Complainant for no charge, with no strings attached, the Panel is inclined to agree. Instead of accepting the Domain Name, Complainant brought this proceeding. A finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking seems to this Panel to be appropriate in the circumstances.

There's this construct within large corporations, which is 'we control our brand!' And the moment anyone does anything unauthorized with it, we need to shut that down. Because brand control is paramount.

To me the lesson is that you can't ever leave the interpretation of fair use to the corporations.

The other thing is to make a qualifiable assessment of what the best business practices for them are. In so many corporations you end up with this battle between the PR department -- who really does understand how to reach out to the fans and put everyone under a nice umbrella -- and the legal department which wants nothing to do with them... and is somehow anti-the fans.... So wake up legal departments. We know that you guys work hard and are smart people. But you need to understand a little bit more about this before you send these nastygrams.

A lawsuit filed May 16 in U.S. District Court charged that West Sixth began selling beer, ale and brewpub services in 2012 using color, trademarks and designs "that closely resemble and are confusingly similar" to the designs used by Magic Hat for several years.

"They're claiming that we intentionally copied their logo, and that has caused them "irreparable harm," enough that they're asking for not only damages but also all our profits up until this point (little do they know that well, as a startup company, there wasn't any, oops!)"

West Sixth logos were created by a professional design firm in Lexington called Cricket Press that has "a long history of fantastic and creative logo designs. ... Our logo contains neither a '#' nor a '9.'"

On May 25, 2013, I'll be darkening the World Nutella Day site, nutelladay.com, and all social media presence (Facebook, Twitter), in compliance with a cease-and-desist I received from lawyers representing Ferrero, SpA (makers of Nutella). The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I've had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I've always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat.

I've spent hundreds of hours interacting with you, the fans, collecting and sharing your contributions, updating the World Nutella Day website with more than 700 recipes which were painstakingly gathered from bloggers sending me their posts and by scouring the internet for the best Nutella recipes, Tweeting and sharing on Facebook your favorite sayings, stories, and links about Nutella, and encouraging everyone to try it just once! Thanks for letting me be a part of that – it was truly a labor of love by a fan and something I did as a fan, in my (very little) spare time, and I have a full-time job I love. I hope that February 5th stays alive in your hearts and on your spoons, and hopefully it's arrivederci (see you soon) and not addio (goodbye).

The origin of the two names – Twisted Sister and Twisted Sisters – are vastly different as you might guess. Russell says the name for her store is a reference to a family label given to the sisters by their late brother back in the 1960s. He also used to call Nancy the “blond tornado” so Twisted Sisters and the logo, which looks like a tornado sketch are rooted in family and our Kansas location. Twisted Sister the band, we assume, has a different origin.

Disney filed 10 requests in the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office this month to coin the phrase. Disney's filings are mainly for merchandise, presumably connected to an upcoming film. The areas they are hoping to secure include “education and entertainment services,” “fruit preserves; fruit-based snack foods,” “toys, games and playthings,” “clothing,” “footwear,” “backpacks,” “clocks and jewelry” and more.

The "WE" logo also is a meme, even though it is only two letters inside the outline of a shield. Of course, WE employs an army of lawyers who use trademark and copyright law to zealously protect its intellectual property, including its logo.

• Random House Dictionary: meme: a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
• Merriam-Webster: meme: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
• Answers.com: meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
• Collins English Dictionary: meme: an idea or element of social behaviour passed on through generations in a culture, esp by imitation
• Wikipedia: meme: A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena

Plaintiffs, however, mistakenly demand statutory damages and an enhancement of damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504, and mistakenly believe that they are entitled to attorneys’ fees and costs of suit under 17 U.S.C. § 505. Defendants are accused of infringing both copyrights in their initial 2009 release of the video games and neither copyright was registered until 2010. Thus, neither Plaintiff is entitled to statutory damages or attorney’s fees, a prerequisite of which – per 17 U.S.C. § 412 – is either registration before commencement of any infringement or within three months after the first publication of the copyrighted work. Further, both the Keyboard Cat video and the Nyan Cat video were published over five years before the application to register the copyrights were filed, thus they are not entitled to a presumption of validity afforded by 17 U.S.C. § 410(c).

They want the term "Belgian chocolate" to be their exclusive preserve and also want to crack down on foreign rivals dressing up their products as "Belgian style" or of a "Belgian recipe".

"What makes us sad is that very often the copies are not up to the standard of the originals," Jos Linkens, chief executive of Neuhaus, told Reuters in an interview. "If top chocolatiers around the world copied us, perhaps we would be happy. We don't want the image of quality to suffer."

We have a monopoly in parts of New York City and no incentive to provide customer service.

We will bill you for services you don’t have and fight you when you dispute the charges.

We will set up appointment times that force you to miss work then cancel at the last second.

We can record your phone call but you can’t record ours.

Even if you report a service outage you will still be charged.

If you call one of our customer service experts to disconnect your internet we will continue to charge you indefinitely until you return our modem. We will make no mention of this during our phone call.

We have one star on Yelp.

Our customer service people routinely "play dumb" during an outage and are rude to subscribers calling for service.

The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked Time Warner Cable the 8th worst in the country!

The clearinghouse "doesn't necessarily prevent trademark infringement or cybersquatting, but it does help trademark owners and brand owners somewhat in mitigating the damage that might occur," he added. "We've been telling brand owners it's not that expensive to protect themselves and they ought to do it."

“Intellectual property and innovation are the cornerstones of American competitiveness and job creation. Yet in recent years, they are all too often relegated to second tier status in our trade policy,” said Hatch. “With our economic competitors getting more sophisticated by the day, finding more ways to steal, expropriate or otherwise undermine the value of U.S. innovation, negotiating strong intellectual property agreements and enforcing them is a necessity, not an option. The establishment of a Chief Innovation and Intellectual Property Negotiator will give intellectual property and innovation the stature they deserve. The Office will help guarantee that America remains at the forefront of innovation policy, that our trade agreements reflect the critical importance of intellectual property to our economy and that the preservation of high-standard IP protection and enforcement are at the forefront of every trade debate.”

"Obviously we can't afford to spend our very limited development budget, which was provided by our backers on Kickstarter, on fighting over a name,"" He says. "But at the same time it would really make me sad if we're forced to change our name just because we can't afford to defend ourselves. I'm still hopeful that it won't come to that."

We are providing you this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 17 USC??512(c) to make Softlayer.com aware of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive copyrights of Woodman Labs, Inc d/b/a GoPro (“Company”). We hereby affirm that the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of Company whose exclusive intellectual property rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

We have a good faith belief that the Internet site found at digitalrev.com infringes the rights of the Company by using the following trademarks of the Company:

“GOPRO” Registered: 3/3/2009 US Registration# 3032989

“HERO” Registered: 12/20/2005 US Registration# 3308141

As you may know, if this information is not removed after notice that complies with the DMCA, the Internet Service Provider may also be held liable for the copyright infringement.

I have a good faith belief that use of the trademark(s) described above in connection with the domain and URLs described above is not authorized by the trademark owner, and such use is not otherwise permissible under applicable law.

I represent that the information in this notification is true and correct and that I am authorized to act on behalf of the trademark owner.

There's nothing in that review that looks like it should trouble GoPro enough to overreact in this fashion. In fact, commenters on the site point out that DigitalRev's reviews of GoPro products usually range from "positive" to "overenthusiastic." So, if the review isn't the issue, what is?

Thankfully, another rep from GoPro responded quickly to clear up the confusion... by adding more confusion. The official statement, left at both Reddit and PetaPixel reads as follows:

Thanks for the heads up on this issue. The letter that was posted next to the review on DigitalRev was not sent in response to the review. Obviously, we welcome editorial reviews of our products. This letter was sent because DigitalRev is not an authorized reseller of GoPro products and they were using images and had incorrect branding and representation of our product in their online commerce store. As part of our program – we ask merchants who are selling our product to use authorized images. That is why DigitalRev was contacted. But – our letter did not clearly communicate this and that is something we will correct.

There are a few things that are muddling this situation at the moment. The notice was sent to digitalrev.com not because of the review, but because digitalreview.com is not an authorized reseller and are using our trademark and product images inappropriately. The notice is in regards to the sidebar, not the review itself, but we can see why it seemed like it as the url links to both.

We would never attempt to restrict anyone's freedom to share their opinion about us or our products, positive or negative.

GoPro does not authorize any of its resellers (or anyone else) to use “GoPro” or “HERO” in domain names. Your registration of goprodivemaster.com is unfortunately in direct violation of this policy. We understand that your intention is simply to sell and promote our products, but GoPro cannot risk misleading customers into believing that they are interacting directly with GoPro when they are engaging with your website or your organization. The use of our trademark terms in your business name may cause confusion, and is prohibited under international trademark law.

Even if the domain redirects to another site, this is not a permissible use of our brand terms.

Please understand: GoPro has spent years building its brand name—only the company itself is legally represented as “GoPro” or the manufacturer of the “HERO” line of cameras. We need you to kindly discontinue the use of our registered/trademarked name as soon as possible.

First, we insist that the European Union and United States release, in timely and ongoing fashion, any and all negotiating or pre-negotiation texts. We believe that secretive “trade” negotiations are absolutely unacceptable forums for devising binding rules that change national non-trade laws.

Second, we insist that the proposed TAFTA exclude any provisions related to patents, copyright, trademarks, data protection, geographical indications, or other forms of so-called “intellectual property”. Such provisions could impede our rights to health, culture, and free expression and otherwise affect our daily lives.

Past trade agreements negotiated by the US and EU have significantly increased the privileges of multinational corporations at the expense of society in general. Provisions in these agreements can, among many other concerns, limit free speech, constrain access to educational materials such as textbooks and academic journals, and, in the case of medicines, raise healthcare costs and contribute to preventable suffering and death.

Unless “intellectual property” is excluded from these talks, we fear that the outcome will be an agreement that inflicts the worst of both regimes’ rules on the other party. From a democratic perspective, we believe that important rules governing technology, health, and culture should be debated in the US Congress, the European Parliament, national parliaments, and other transparent forums where all stakeholders can be heard—not in closed negotiations that give privileged access to corporate insiders.

The TAFTA negotiations must not lead to a rewriting of patent and copyright rules in a way that tilts the balance even further away from the interests of citizens.

Today, Python is used by some of the biggest names in computing, including Google, so you might assume things like trademarks were sorted out years ago. But this posting by Van Lindberg, Chairman of the Python Software Foundation, reveals that's not the case everywhere:

There is a company in the UK that is trying to trademark the use of the term "Python" for all software, services, servers... pretty much anything having to do with a computer. Specifically, it is the company that got a hold on the python.co.uk domain 13 years ago. At that time we weren't looking a lot at trademark issues, and so we didn't get that domain.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

To which I say: virtual wallet, virtual wallet, virtual wallet, virtual wallet.

In late 1994, Newsweek published an article titled "The Age of Cybercash" that informed readers: "Your virtual wallet may soon be here."

By the end of 2007, the term "virtual wallet" had appeared more than 700 times in the English press, including in American Banker, the Economist, the New York Times and Consumer Reports.

Nevertheless, the following year, PNC Financial Services Group launched a "Virtual Wallet" product. It sought trademark protection, asking to own the commercial rights to two consecutive words that had been pushed together by the press and industry more than a decade earlier.

Early in December here at Wordnik we got a nice email from one of our loyal users, letting us know that there was a word game in the app store using the name “Wordnik.” It didn’t have our heart logo (or even our “gearheart” ) so our correspondent wasn’t sure it was ours … and it wasn’t. So we took a look at the game, and it was called Wordnik. And there was contact info for the developer.

For some strange reason, however, the Wordnik folks decided that there just might be a better way to go than all out war. While acknowledging that their initial reaction was to be somewhat upset over the use of their mark, they instead chose to send the following email (edited only for formatting):

One of the users of our website, Wordnik.com, pointed out to us that your iOS app is also using the name “Wordnik”. You may not be aware that we have applied for a US trademark for the name “Wordnik” and our application has been approved for registration. Since the Wordnik API powers many word games on the web and on mobile devices, our trademark filing for the name “Wordnik” also includes its use in combination with computer games.

I’d rather not drag our lawyers into this (expensive for both of us) — but given our trademark status, you probably want to consider renaming your app (and maybe even using our API, check it out at developer.wordnik.com). How about:

Wordify
Wordista
Wordian
Wordeur

This list of English suffixes may help, too: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_suffixes

I hope to hear back from you by Dec 31, 2012.

From our point of view, this was the best possible outcome. We defended our trademark; we met a cool, kindred-spirit developer and had a fun conversation; and we found a new word game to play (and possibly gained another API client). And it’s likely none of this would have happened if we’d sent a pissy email, guns blazing.

Checker's lawyers are seeking half a billion dollars for the "irreparable damage and harm" caused by the Chubby Checker, an app for Hewlett-Packard's Palm OS platform. "This lawsuit is about preserving the integrity and legacy of a man who has spent years working hard [editor's note: HA!] at his musical craft and has earned the position of one of the greatest musical entertainers of all time," explained lawyer Willie Gary.

The lawsuit alleges that the egregious and flagrant acts of Hewlett Packard and Palm, Inc., if not stopped immediately, will permit Defendants to enjoy profits to which they are not entitled.

The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to UN global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted by an international body. This needs to be stated publicly more often. If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.

Alex Jones: Well, God bless you, sir, I hope we can get you back again in a month. What are any other websites that are important, just www.CampaignForLiberty.org?

Ron Paul: There’s that, and we’ll be listing some new things there because we’re making some other WebPages. I’m going to have a home page. Unfortunately, I didn’t have RonPaul.com, so I’m going to have to have RonPaulsHomepage.com. That will be coming up, but it’s not ready yet.

On May 1st, 2008 we launched a grassroots website at RonPaul.com that became one of the most popular resources dedicated exclusively to Ron Paul and his ideas. We put our lives on hold and invested 4.5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012. Looking back, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve with unlimited enthusiasm and limited financial resources.

As we haven’t heard from Ron Paul or his staff for several years we do not know if there is any tangible interest in utilizing RonPaul.com for Ron Paul’s new projects. We have prepared a cordial message for Ron Paul that we will gladly forward to him or to any person who credibly identifies himself as part of his current staff.

Respondents can demonstrate no legitimate purpose for registering domain names identical to Complainant's RON PAUL mark.

There is no evidence that Respondents have used or in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services.

Under the UDRP, bad faith can be shown where the respondent registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling it to the trademark owner or to a competitor of that complainant, for consideration in excess of respondent's out-of-pocket costs.

Further evidence of bad faith comes from Respondents' registration and use of the domain names to intentionally attract Internet users for commercial gain by creating a likelihood of confusion with Complainant's RON PAUL mark... In this case, Respondents must have known of Complainant's famous mark prior to registering the domain names. Respondents registered the domain name, utilizing the Complainant's mark, in order to suggest to internet users a connection between the domain names and Complainant. This is misleading and supports a finding of bad faith registration.

[....]

There is a high likelihood that users will be confused and believe that Complainant is the website's source, sponsor, or is some way affiliated with or endorses the website. If not for this likelihood of confusion, the rental value of the domain names would be significantly decreased.

Disclaimer
The RonPaul.com website is maintained by independent grassroots supporters of Ron Paul. Neither this website nor the articles, posts, videos or photos appearing on it are paid for, approved, endorsed or reviewed by Ron Paul or his Campaign. For Ron Paul's official website, go to RonPaul2008.com

The RonPaul.com website is maintained by grassroots supporters. It is not paid for, approved, endorsed or reviewed by Ron Paul & Campaign.

Respondents later offered to sell <ronpaul .com> to Complainant for $250,000 and to provide <ronpaul .org> as a "free gift" with the purchase of <ronpaul .com>.

Back in 2007 we put our lives on hold for you, Ron, and we invested close to 10,000 hours of tears, sweat and hard work into this site at great personal sacrifice. We helped raise millions of dollars for you, we spread your message of liberty as far and wide as we possibly could, and we went out of our way to defend you against the unjustified attacks by your opponents. Now that your campaigns are over and you no longer need us, you want to take it all away – and send us off to a UN tribunal?