Peloton Seeks To Invalidate 'Spinning' Trademark Held By Trademark Bully

from the spin-cycle dept

Back in 2010, we discussed that the at-the-time "spin class" craze in the fitness world was encountering the fact that one company, Mad Dogg Athletics, held a trademark on the term "spinning" for use in the fitness industry. Mad Dogg had taken to going around the world and threatening anyone else using the term with trademark infringement as a result. And, to be clear, they had a lot of targets for these threats, which factored into the argument that term was now generic and hadn't been properly enforced as a trademark for years.

Since 2010, the spin class craze has morphed out of the brick and mortar gym and into home fitness, with the current fad being app-driven home stationary spin bikes. The leader in that field is, of course, Peloton. Mad Dogg sued Peloton for trademark infringement last year over patents it holds for core features of its bikes. In what may be something of a clap back in that dispute, however, Peloton has now petitioned to have Mad Dogg's "spinning" trademark canceled entirely.

Peloton claimed that rival fitness company Mad Dogg Athletics is “abusively enforcing” its trademark rights of ‘Spinning’ and ‘Spin’ across the indoor biking industry in a petition filed to the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (USPTO) yesterday.

The petition argued that the terms are generic and that Mad Dogg’s lawyers have been ceaseless in their campaign to chase down infringers. It also cites John Baudhuin, co-founder of Mad Dogg, admitting to spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year” on litigation.

This is Peloton calling out the game, which is very useful. Rather than focusing primarily on the business of selling spin bikes, Mad Dogg instead seems to be focused on policing its trademark. The argument that the term "spinning" has become generic is only bolstered by the high volume of victims of Mad Dogg's bullying. In addition, it would be interesting to see Mad Dogg attempt to come up with any evidence that the wider public currently associates the term with its products, because that feels like it would be a stretch to say the least.

Peloton's petition calls out the extremes to which Mad Dogg has gone in its bullying.

“Enough is enough. It is time to put a stop to Mad Dogg’s tactic of profiting by threatening competitors, marketplaces and even journalists with enforcement of generic trademarks.”

Imagine the instant good the USPTO could do simply by invalidating a trademark for what has become a generic term in the fitness industry.

Filed Under: spinning, trademark, upsto
Companies: mad dogg athletics, peloton

A Teenaged Tech CEO Tries To Sneak In After Curfew And Finds His Mom Waited Up For Him

from the but-maaaaaaaaahm dept

With Congress spending a lot of time these days demanding answers from big tech firms, you may have noticed a notable similarity in style regarding how they respond to these kinds of inquiries.

Thank you very much for inviting my input on the topic of being grounded. I appreciate the opportunity to engage with Mom regarding this important discussion.

I take living under your roof very seriously. I am proud to be a recognized leader in crucial household initiatives such as making the bed and setting the table. Last year, data rigorously collected by the chores chart on the refrigerator[1] shows that I folded the laundry 48 times, a 200% increase year over year. [2] My contributions in these areas demonstrate my ongoing commitment to this family.

From time to time, I may adjust my going-out policies based on data-driven decision-making and evaluation of the current regulatory environment. My interpretation of curfew is based upon guidance from Dad who said 1:00 a.m. was OK, but you weren’t there, I think you were at the store. If the conclusions I drew from this guidance do not reflect parental intent, I regret the miscommunication and appreciate the chance for clarification.

My policies are consistent with industry best practices in this area. According to my most recent review, Jennifer's mom lets her come home at 1:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and Denise's mom lets her sleep over at a boy's house so long as his mom calls her mom first. Accordingly, I believe that my going-out policy reflects standard parental expectations in the community where I operate.

Should you have any additional requests for information, I can be reached in my room via text message. Mom, gawd, just text me like a normal person. No I won’t hear you knock because I always have my earbuds in. Well I put them in because you complained I was playing my music too loud, JEEZ I CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT I HATE IT HERE [bursts into tears, storms upstairs]

Thank you again for the opportunity to continue the dialogue on this critical issue. I look forward to answering your questions.

[1] See Attachment A.
[2] Id.; see also [REDACTED].

When Riana Pfefferkorn is not writing satirical letters to Congress Mom, she's a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She can be found online at @Riana_Crypto.

Filed Under: congress, teenagers, testimony

Indian Government Requires Educational Establishments To Obtain Its Approval For The Subject Matter And Participants Of International Online Conferences And Seminars

from the hardly-an-edifying-sight dept

It would be something of an understatement to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a big effect on our lives. One sector where people have had to re-invent themselves is the academic world. Core in-person activities like lectures, seminars, and conferences have been forced to move online. One advantage of a shift to virtual gatherings is that people can participate from around the world. However, for governments, that's less a feature than a bug, since it means they have less control over who is taking part, and what they are saying. In response to this development, the Ministry of Education in India has issued "Revised Guidelines for holding online/virtual Conferences, Seminars, Training, etc." (pdf). An opinion piece in The Indian Express calls it the "biggest attack in the history of independent India on the autonomy of our universities":

When it is fully enforced -- and let there be no doubts over the government's resolve to be iron-handed when it comes to restricting people's democratic rights -- India will find itself in the company of dictatorial regimes around the world that despise liberty of thought and muzzle freedom of expression in their institutions of higher learning.

The new guidelines apply to all publicly funded higher education establishments. The key requirement is for international online conferences and seminars to avoid politically sensitive topics, specifically any related to problems along India's borders. Chief among these are disputes between India and China over borders in the north-east of India, which has recently seen skirmishes between the Indian and Chinese armies, and in Kashmir. Another ban, vague in the extreme, concerns "any other issues which are clearly/purely related to India's internal matters". As well as obtaining approval for the topics of planned online meetings, educational establishments must also submit a list of participants to be vetted. And once an approved conference or seminar has taken place, a link to the event must be provided. As The Indian Express column points out, these new restrictions are likely to hit Indian universities particularly hard:

Unlike their western counterparts, they are severely under-funded. They can neither organise many international conferences, nor send their faculty to participate in such events abroad. The recent boom in webinars has, hence, come as a big boon to them. It saves travel and hospitality costs and also overcomes the hassles of getting visas for invitees from "unfriendly" countries. Moreover, such events can be easily, and more frequently, organised even by institutions in rural and remote areas. Disturbingly, the government wants to curtail these major benefits of the digital revolution to millions of our teachers, students and scientists.

The Indian government's desire to control what is said, and by whom, is likely to harm the spread of knowledge in a country that was just beginning to enjoy one of the few benefits of the pandemic: easier access to international academic gatherings.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: academic freedom, china, conferences, free speech, india, pandemic

Appeals Court Says Handing Out A Free Sample Of Drugs Isn't A 'Conspiracy'

from the do-better,-drug-warriors dept

Our nation's preeminent drug warriors rolled the dice on turning less than a half-gram of drugs into a lengthy prison sentence. They lost. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals isn't amused by the machinations of DEA agents (and federal prosecutors) who tried to turn a freebie sample into a drug trafficking conspiracy.

The opinion [PDF] opens with the Appeals Court showing just how permissive and expansive drug conspiracy statutes are.

Our court has long interpreted the drug-conspiracy statute, 21 U.S.C. § 846, to prohibit two individuals from knowingly reaching an agreement to distribute drugs.

Any two individuals. Pretty fucking open-ended. If you want a conspiracy, it doesn't take much to find one.

This conspiracy test could be read to cover every drug transaction between a willing seller and a willing buyer, even those for the buyer’s personal use. After all, the seller has agreed with the buyer to “distribute” drugs between them.

But it's not quite as expansive as the DEA officers involved in this case thought it was. There are a few judicial limits.

Yet we have also long held that a buyer-seller agreement alone does not establish a “conspiracy” under § 846.

And it's definitely not so expansive that it can cover what happened here. When the focus of the prosecution shifts to someone who was only incidental to the primary investigation, it's pretty difficult to continue pretending there's a "conspiracy."

The government presented overwhelming evidence that Aaron Reels operated a drug distribution scheme. The problem? Reels was not on trial. William Wheat was. And the evidence against Wheat showed essentially that he once gave Reels a .3-gram free “sample” of heroin—a sample that led to no further exchanges between them.

Whoops. The DEA had an actual drug trafficker in its grasp. But then it decided it also wanted the guy who spritzed a local dealer with some smack from the sample bottle. This is a recipe for losses, dismissals, and evidence suppression.

The government alleged that Wheat agreed with Reels to distribute heroin, and a jury convicted him of a drug conspiracy. We conclude, however, that insufficient evidence supports this conviction. The logic underlying our buyer-seller exception extends to Wheat’s agreement to distribute a sample to Reels. And the government did not present enough additional evidence of a broader agreement between Wheat and Reels to distribute heroin to third parties.

But not every charge is dismissed. The guy handing out the .3-gram "supply" of heroin made the mistake of using something everyone uses multiple times per day.

At the same time, Wheat used his phone to arrange the exchange of the sample. So the government more than sufficiently proved that he used a “communication facility” to facilitate a drug felony.

Sure, that's a much shorter sentence. But, come on: if it wasn't a "conspiracy," how can a "felony" be "facilitated" by the use of a phone to discuss a sample? The court giveth. And taketh. At the end of all of this, there's a person facing a few years in prison for handing out a sample.

I'm not sure what we're paying Cleveland-area DEA agents, but this arrest, indictment, and (partial) conviction doesn't appear to justify their salary.

The two arranged to meet at a Circle K gas station the next day. While there, Wheat gave Reels a free “sample” of about .3 grams of heroin. Samples are often exchanged between drug dealers who do not know each other well to help potential purchasers decide whether to buy from potential sellers. Testimony in this case suggested that the .3 grams would otherwise cost about $20 to $40 on the Cleveland drug market.

Yes, the DEA took down the actual drug dealer as well, but it couldn't resist trying to turn a free sample into a drug conspiracy worth years of imprisonment at taxpayer expense -- all over $20-40-worth of drugs. Good lord. The court calls bullshit:

Measured against these standards, Wheat’s conspiracy conviction cannot stand. To be sure, the government presented a “slam-dunk” case that Wheat committed a crime: He distributed a heroin sample to Reels in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1).

Maybe a case could be made for a lesser charge. But the DEA and federal prosecutors chose to go large.

But it did not charge Wheat with distributing to Reels; it charged him with conspiring with Reels.

Good luck talking a jury into that, says the court:

This evidence would allow a rational jury to conclude that Wheat and Reels negotiated a future drug deal, not that they agreed on one.

And the government's arguments actually makes its case worse:

As the government’s expert explained, drug sellers give samples to buyers to see if they “like[] the drugs” and help them decide whether “to purchase more.” It is not all that unlike Costco offering customers, say, a free taquito sample. Would anyone infer (beyond a reasonable doubt, no less) that a customer has agreed to buy a bulk package of taquitos merely from the decision to try the sample?

The government’s expert added that Reels had been “shopping around” for samples from several sources, “just like if you were buying a car, you are going to go get the best price and the best car for your dollar, and that’s exactly what he’s doing here[.]” Does his receipt of the other samples show an agreement to buy from the other sources too? [...]

In short, “[p]roof of mere negotiations” does not prove a conspiracy. And the government identifies “nothing but speculation” that the parties ever passed this negotiations phase.

This is some supremely lazy work by the DEA. And the work done by prosecutors to pursue this losing effort is nothing more than blowing tax dollars on charges that are both opportunistic and vindictive. The DEA already had a solid bust involving an actual drug trafficker. Then it got greedy and decided to pounce on someone who may have been doing nothing more than working a side hustle to support his own habit. That's the government seeking to take away anything from 5-40 years from someone's life just because they handed out a free sample of heroin to a known drug dealer who was already targeted by the DEA.

That's not a drug war victory. That's not going to keep massive amounts of drugs off the street. It's just federal prosecutors inflicting pain because they can.

Filed Under: 6th circuit, conspiracy, dea, drug war

Is Section 230 Just For Start-ups? History Says Nope

from the original-intentions dept

One of the arguments for changing Section 230 is that even if we needed it a long time ago when the Internet was new, now that the Internet has been around for a while and some of the companies providing Internet services are quite big, we don't need it anymore. This view is simply untrue: Internet service providers of every size still need it, including and perhaps even especially the big ones because they are the ones handling the greatest volume of user expression.

Furthermore, Section 230 was never specifically aimed at start-ups. Indeed, from the outset it was intended to address the legal problems faced by an established incumbent.

The origin story for Section 230 begins with the Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy case. In this case a New York state court allowed Prodigy to be sued over speech a user had posted. By doing so the court not only hurt Prodigy right then, in that case, but it threatened to hurt it in the future by opening the door to more lawsuits against it or any other online service provider—which would also be bad news for online expression more broadly as well. In the shadow of this decision services weren't going to be able to facilitate the greatest amount of valuable user expression, or minimize the greatest amount of detrimental. Even back then Prodigy was handling far too many posts by users for it to be possible to vet all, or even most, of them. While that volume might today seem like a drop in the bucket compared to how much expression Internet services handle now, the operative point is that use of online services like Prodigy had already surpassed the point where a service provider could possibly be able to review everything that ever appeared on its systems and make decisions about what to leave up or take down perfectly. If that's what they needed to do to avoid being crushed by litigation, then they were looking at a future of soon being crushed by litigation.

And that was the case for Prodigy even though it was an established service. As an *Internet* service provider Prodigy may have been new to the game because the Internet had only just left the realm of academia and become something that commercial service providers could provide access to. But it was hardly new as an "interactive computer service" provider, which is what Section 230 actually applies to. True, Section 230 contemplates that interactive computer service providers may likely provide Internet-based services, but it doesn't condition its statutory protection on being connected to the Internet. (From 47 U.S.C. Section 230(f)(2): "The term 'interactive computer service' means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server…"). To be eligible for Section 230 the service provider simply needs to be in the business of providing some form of interactive computer service, and Prodigy had been doing that for well over a decade as a dial-up service with its own proprietary network—just like CompuServe had long done and eventually America Online did as well.

Furthermore, Prodigy was a service provider started by Sears and IBM (and briefly also CBS). At the time these were some of the largest companies in America. The "big tech" of the era was "Big Blue" (as IBM was known). And while Sears may have managed to bungle itself into irrelevance in the years since, at the time Section 230 was passed there were few companies more expert in remote commerce than it was. Nevertheless it was the needs of these big companies that Congress was addressing with Section 230 because Congress recognized that it wasn't just their needs that it was addressing. The same legal rules that kept start-ups from being obliterated by litigation were the same ones needed to keep the bigger players from being obliterated as well.

The irony, of course, is that Section 230 may have ultimately ended up hurting the bigger players, because in the long run it opened the door to competition that ultimately ate these companies' lunch. Of course, that's what we would still want Section 230 to do: open the door to service providers that can do a better job than the large existing incumbents. It can hardly be said that Section 230 was or is a subsidy to "big tech," then or now, when building that on-ramp for something better is what it has always done and needs to be allowed to continue to do.

Filed Under: big tech, intermediary liability, section 230, startups

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Language Learning Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Ultimate Language Learning Bundle features 7 courses to help you learn the basics of 6 languages. You'll learn useful everyday phrases, basic sentence structures, and basic grammar rules. Once you are done with the courses, you will be capable of introducing yourself formally and informally, pronounce words correctly, understand basic sentence structures, and more. The courses cover Spanish, Italian, French, Greek, Japanese, and Portuguese. The bundle is on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook's Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia

from the it's-quite-reasonable dept

None of this should have been a surprise. Back in September we wrote about Facebook publicly saying that if Australia went forward with its ridiculous attack on the open internet, and instituted a "news link tax" on Facebook and Google, that it would block news links on Facebook in Australia... and basically everyone ignored it. So, yesterday, when Facebook announced that it was no longer allowing news to be shared in Australia (and relatedly, no longer allowing the sharing of Australian news services on Facebook), it should not have been a surprise.

And yet... it seemed to make tons of people freak out for all the wrong reasons. Almost everyone started blaming and attacking Facebook. And, look, I get it, Facebook is a terrible, terrible company and deserves lots of blame for lots of bad things that it does. But this ain't it. There are a lot of examples of this, but because he's the top member of the House of Representatives working on antitrust issues, I'll specifically call out Rep. David Cicilline's response:

That says:

If it is not already clear, Facebook is not compatible with democracy.

Threatening to bring an entire country to its knees to agree to Facebook’s terms is the ultimate admission of monopoly power.

But that's completely nonsensical. We can argue about whether or not Facebook is "compatible with democracy" but the simple facts of the situation are that Australia -- pushed heavily by Rupert Murdoch -- has decided to put in place a plan to tax Google and Facebook for any links to news. The bill has all sorts of problems, but there are two huge ones that should concern basically anyone who supports a free and open internet.

First is the link tax. This is fundamentally against the principles of an open internet. The government saying that you can't link to a news site unless you pay a tax should be seen as inherently problematic for a long list of reasons. At a most basic level, it's demanding payment for traffic. There are two entire industries out there based entirely around trying to get more traffic from these companies: "search engine optimization" and "social media management." The reasons there are those industries is because everyone else in the world has figured out that having prominent links on search engines and social media is valuable in its own right and that it's up to the sites that get those links, and the corresponding traffic, to make use of it.

But here, a bunch of lazy newspaper execs who failed to adapt and to figure out better internet business models not only want the traffic, they also want to get paid for it.

This is like saying that not only should NBC have to run an advertisement for Techdirt, but it should have to pay me for it. If that seems totally nonsensical, that's because it is. The link tax makes no sense.

And, most importantly, as any economist will tell you, taxing something doesn't just bring in revenue, it decreases whatever you tax. This is why we have things like cigarette taxes and pollution taxes. It's a tool to get less of something. So, in this case, Australia is saying it wants to tax links to news on Facebook, and Facebook responds in the exact way any reasonable economist would predict: it says that's just not worth it and bans links. That's not incompatible with democracy. It's not bringing a country to its knees. The country said "this is how much news links cost" and Facebook said "oh, that's too expensive, so we'll stop."

Contrary to the idea that this is an "attack" on journalism or news in Australia, it's not. The news still exists in Australia. News companies still have websites. People can still visit those websites.

Indeed, the people who are saying that this move by Facebook is somehow an "attack" on news or an attack on Australian sovereignty seem to be admitting more than they'd really like: that they think Facebook must be a dominant source of news in the country.

I mean, if Facebook is really such a problem, shouldn't they all be celebrating? This is Facebook saying "okay, okay, we'll completely remove ourselves from the news business." Since everyone was complaining that Facebook was too much of a presence in the news business... isn't that... a victory?

And we haven't even gotten to the other problematic part of the law -- which is that it requires Facebook and Google to give newspapers heads up to algorithmic changes. This is completely disconnected from reality. Facebook and Google may make multiple algorithm changes every day, just to keep their services running. Having to tell newspapers (and them alone) about those changes with a few weeks notice is basically giving those news organizations the keys to the kingdom: it's telling them how to game the algorithms. If you think bogus clickbait is a problem now, just imagine what it's like when all of the Australian press get to know the secrets behind the algorithm, and get to prepare for any changes.

The whole story is absolutely ridiculous. And the most incredible thing is that no matter what Facebook did here it would have gotten yelled at. And the proof is not hard to find. Because just an hour or two before Facebook made this announcement, Google went the other way -- coming to an agreement to pay Rupert Murdoch for featuring Murdoch-owned news organizations content on Google. And people freaked out, complaining about Google helping fund Rupert Murdoch's disinformation empire. Except... that's the whole point of the law? So it's a bit bizarre that the same people are mad about both Facebook's decision to not give free money to Rupert and Google caving to do exactly that:

So... it's bad to pay Murdoch. And it's bad not to pay Murdoch. There is no consistency or principle behind all this other than people so focused on "Facebook and Google must be evil, so even when they do the exact opposite of each other, both are more evidence of evil."

This fight was not "Facebook v. Australia." Or "Facebook v. journalism" even though some ignorant or dishonest people are making it out to be the case. This was always "Rupert Murdoch v. the open web." We may not like Facebook in the role of the defender of the open web (and it's far from the best representative for the open web). But Facebook saying that it won't pay a link tax is a defense of the open web and against Rupert Murdoch. It's the right move, and whatever else you may think of Facebook, the company deserves credit for taking the right stand here.

Filed Under: australia, link tax, links, news, open internet, rupert murdoch
Companies: facebook, google, news corp.

Chattanooga Built Its Own Broadband Network. Now It's The Top Ranked 'Work From Home' City In The US

from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept

PC Magazine recently unveiled their list of the best cities to work at home from. To make the list, the magazine examined affordable housing, the availability of fast gigabit broadband, reasonably priced internet connections in general, and the presence of employers with friendly work from home policies. At the top of the list? Chattanooga, Tennessee:

"Our number-one remote-working town in the US is Chattanooga, known as "Gig City," which rolled out a citywide fiber network in 2010. As we recounted in a 2018 story, Chattanooga has been pushing hard to attract tech workers and companies based on its affordable real estate, business-friendly administrations, and widely available broadband internet. In 2019, according to the Census, 6.8% of Hamilton County, TN residents worked from home, compared with 5.7% of all Americans."

One of the city's primary policies was to embrace community-run broadband, offering locals ultra-fast and affordable fiber via the local city's utility. It's an effort that incumbent broadband providers like Comcast first tried to strangle via state law, then attempted to destroy via lawsuit. Neither worked, and now Chattanooga residents have access to some of the fastest and most affordable broadband in the United States (the ISP won Consumer Reports' top ISP award in 2018), which has in turn helped drive business growth and employment in the city.

This is, it should be made clear, the kind of innovation and growth we've crippled by letting incumbent telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast not only carve out geographical monopolies, but also literally write state and federal telecom law. Both companies are predominately responsible for the 20 some odd state laws that hamstring (or ban outright) towns and cities looking to get into the broadband business. They've also spent the better part of twenty years funding a coalition of dollar-per-holler think tankers and academics who try (usually poorly) to smear such efforts.

This farmed opposition to community broadband is usually built on the flimsy premise that it's "unfair" for governments to compete with the private sector. Or that these efforts are inevitable "taxpayer boondoggles" (you're to ignore the billions we throw at giants like AT&T for absolutely nothing). Both arguments are intentionally false and misleading.

Cities like Chattanooga aren't getting into the costly business of building broadband networks because it's fun, they really want to spend the money, or they want to make Comcast and AT&T executives cry. They're doing it because of market failure. They're building their own networks because incumbent providers have heavily monopolized the sector, resulting in spotty upgrades, slow speeds, high prices, privacy violations, and dodgy customer service. And when cities have tried to buck this status quo, they're usually sued, misrepresented, bizarrely demonized, or legislatively hammered by state and federal governments in mindless thrall to monopolist campaign contributions.

That's not to say that community broadband is some mystical panacea that fixes every city's ills. Nor is it to suggest that every city has the financial and technical skills or resources to pull off a successful business plan. But community broadband is a useful tool in the toolbox, particularly when it comes to nudging government-pampered regional telecom monopolies out of their comfort zones. Community-owned ISPs also tend to be more responsive to the complaints of locals, because they are locals. It's ignorant and counterproductive to ban such options in a country where 42 million have no access to broadband and another 83 million only have the choice of one ISP. Yet it's still happening.

In Chattanooga, the city has been blocked from expanding its award-winning network because of a Comcast-backed law passed decades ago. A law that served no function outside of protecting entrenched monopoly revenues from disruption. Historically, efforts to get states to dismantle such dumb, protectionist restrictions have been glacial, but as the COVID pandemic illustrates how truly counterproductive such restrictions are in a world were broadband is utterly essential, you can feel awareness and consensus start to shift.

Filed Under: broadband, chattanooga, competition, fiber, gig city, municipal broadband, tennessee, work from hom

Random Jackass Attempts To Trademark 'Mayor Of Mar-A-Lago' In The Most Hilarious Way

from the not-how-it-works dept

For years now, I have railed on the USPTO for its overly permissive posture when it comes to granting trademarks. The whole thing is far too easy, with far too little concern shown by examiners as to how distinct or useful proposed marks actually are. All of that being said, there are still some hoops you have to jump through to get a trademark. And there are some rules governing how to get through those hoops.

It appears someone needs to give Natale Passaro some lessons in how trademarks work, then. See, Passaro recently filed for a trademark on the term "Mayor of Mar-A-Lago." The proposed classes for the mark are to be for "shirts" and "consulting services". Part of the application requirements, however, is documentation on "specimen of use." This is basically the USPTO asking the applicant to show evidence of the mark's current or proposed use.

A specimen of use is a real-world example of how the mark is being used on goods and/or services. A real-world example means that it is an actual object that bears the mark, not just a photo or drawing of the mark. For goods, a person can submit tags, instruction manuals, containers, labels, or packaging materials.

What the Passaro submitted for his specimen, um, doesn't cut it.

Now, I truly wish that it was Donald Trump's hand that scrawled the phrase over a picture of a building at the club and a cartoon depiction of himself, because that makes all of this funnier. Unfortunately, it appears that this application came instead from someone just trying to cash in on the club and former President. That this initially confused a bunch of people, including me, is also a pretty good argument against any approval for this trademark.

But, again, that isn't how this works when it comes to the specimen of use. The USPTO is not going to take some scribbles of a proposed... I don't know, logo? That simply doesn't work for a specimen of use, it isn't in any way the behavior of a professional organization, and it calls into question just how serious this trademark application is if this really is the best Passaro can do on a trademark application. Given that this all also seems to be some strange attempt to get Mar-A-Lago incorporated as its own township and out of the jurisdiction of Palm Beach for... reasons, this all probably doesn't bode well for the success on that effort, either.

Filed Under: donald trump, mar a lago, mayor of mar a lago, natale passaro, trademark, use in commerce, uspto

Content Moderation Case Study: Google 'Removes' German Residences From Street View By Request (2010)

from the privacy-or-not? dept

Summary: Google's Street View is a powerful mapping tool that allows users to visit places they'll possibly never be able to visit and allows local users to see homes and businesses they're trying to locate.

But Google's Street View hasn't been warmly welcomed everywhere. In Germany -- a country with a long history of pervasive surveillance by government agencies -- Google’s mapping project hit a roadblock. In an effort to comply with German privacy laws, Google worked with data protection authorities to ensure all requirements were met before its cars and cameras hit the road.

Restrictions on data collection have resulted in Germany being one of the least-mapped countries in Europe.

After meeting with considerable public opposition to Google's street mapping, Google allowed residents to opt out. This resulted in opted-out locations being blurred in Street View, providing owners with more privacy inside Street View than they enjoyed outside it.

Decisions to be made by Google:

• Should the normal lack of an expectation of privacy in publicly-viewable areas override local restrictions on data-gathering?
• Is an opt-out plan cost effective (as compared to simply not mapping at all in restricted areas)?
• Do "holes" in map coverage increase risks to drivers and travelers? 
• Is there a possibility the opt-out function could be abused by trolls and/or opponents of Google's Street View project?

Questions and policy implications to consider:

• Does following local privacy laws possibly make Google's Street View less useful than competing products that may not follow laws or that receive more deference from local authorities?
• Is the mapping project likely to run into greater resistance in the future, given world legislators' ongoing concerns with lax privacy laws?
• Could Google be considered culpable for harm resulting from incomplete maps, especially when coupled with Google's built-in live navigation software?
• What tools does Google have at its disposal to push back against legal restrictions?

Resolution: Given the chance to opt out, most Germans chose not to. According to Google, less than 3% of affected households asked Google to blur their residences, resulting in a little more than 244,000 blurred houses in Street View.

The opt-out program also led to an unfortunate, unforeseen, and completely unintended consequence. A small group of rogue "transparency advocates" sought out "blurred" houses and egged them. Some of those who opted out were also treated to handwritten notes informing them that Google was "cool." Very little actual damage was done.

Despite the early opposition -- which resulted in Google shutting down its attempted mapping of Germany in 2011 -- Google has taken a second run at the country and its resistance to the Street View project. Its site lists a large number of German cities and towns that have recently been mapped by Google during its latest attempt, which began in July 2020 and will wrap up early next year. Google "removes" German residences from Street View by request (2010)

Filed Under: germany, google maps, maps, privacy, street view
Companies: google