Although the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has dropped off the radar completely since Donald Trump's election, for some years it was a key concern of both the US and European governments, and a major theme of Techdirt's posts. One of the key issues was transparency -- or the lack of it. Eventually, the European Commission realized that its refusal to release information about the negotiations was seriously undermining its ability to sell the deal to the EU public, and it began making some changes on this front, as we discussed back in 2015. Since then, transparency has remained a theme of the European Commission's initiatives. Last month, in his annual State of the Union address, President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled his proposals for trade policy. One of them was all about transparency:

the Commission has decided to publish as of now all its recommendations for negotiating directives for trade agreements (known as negotiating mandates). When they are submitted to the European Parliament and the Council, those documents will in parallel be sent automatically to all national Parliaments and will be made available to the general public. This should allow for a wide and inclusive debate on the planned agreements from the start.

An interesting article on Borderlex explores why moves to open up trade policy by the European Commission did not and probably never will satisfy activists who have been pushing for more transparency, and why in this area there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the EU politicians. In contrast to Juncker's limited plan to publish negotiating directives in order to allow "a wide and inclusive debate on the planned agreements", this is what activists want, according to the article:

timely release of textual proposals on all negotiating positions, complete lists and minutes of meetings of Commission officials with third parties, consolidated texts, negotiating mandates, and all correspondence between third parties and officials.

Activists are keen to see what is happening in detail throughout the negotiations, not just some top-level view at the start, or the initial textual proposals for each chapter, but nothing afterwards. The article suggests that this is not simply a case of civil society wanting more information for its own sake, but rather reflects completely different conceptions of what transparency means. Transparency is intimately bound up with accountability, which raises the key question of: accountability to whom?

These two different views reflect a seminal academic distinction between 'delegation' and 'participation' models of accountability in international politics. In a 'delegation' model, an organisation (such as the Commission) is accountable to those who have granted it a mandate (in the EU: the Council, the [European Parliament] and national parliaments). Transparency and participation should first and foremost be directed to them. Extending managed transparency to the wider public can be instrumentally used to increase trust.

In a 'participation model', in contrast, organisations are accountable to those who bear the burden of the decisions that are taken. If contemporary trade policy impacts people's daily lives, the people -- directly or through civil society organisations that claim to represent them -- should be able to see what is going on, and be able to influence the process. Therefore, there is a presupposition for openness, disclosure, and close participation.

The article's authors suggest that for activists, transparency is a means to an end -- gaining influence through participation -- and it is the European Commission's refusal to allow civil society any meaningful role in trade negotiations that guarantees that token releases of a few policy documents will never be enough.

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Author Dan Brown is certainly not a stranger to copyright claims and lawsuits over his bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Not long after publishing the book in 2003 to wide acclaim, several legal actions took place against Brown and his publisher, as well as some action initiated by the publisher to stave off claims of copyright infringement and plagiarism. One such case that we did not cover here was brought by Jack Dunn of Massachusetts, who authored a book called The Vatican Boys, and sued Brown in Massachusetts for copyright infringement over the usual claims: there were claimed similarities in characters, plots, and factual assertions (including some that are erroneous in both). In 2007, Judge Michael Ponsor threw out the case, claiming that all the evidence Dunn's legal team provided amounted to thematic and structural similarities, which are not copyrightable.

For the proceeding decade, Dunn simply went away. That is until he found another law firm willing to file another copyright suit against Brown, but this time in the UK. The suit is reportedly being prepped for filing, with Dunn's side making much of the impending legal action.

Dunn has hired London-based media law firm Keystone Law. In a letter to Penguin Random House, Keystone stated they intended to issue proceedings for copyright infringement unless they received a credible explanation from Brown and his researcher wife, Blythe Brown, for what they perceive to be extraordinary similarities in both works.

Keystone Law’s letter stated: “There are hundreds of similarities between “The Vatican Boys” and “The Da Vinci Code” which comprise copying portions of TVB [“The Vatican Boys”] in the form of storylines, plots, characters, historical information, scenes, themes and even factual error which have been appropriated from TVB by Mr. and/or Mrs. Brown in writing The TDC [“The Da Vinci Code].”

It seems that the requested explanation from Brown or Penguin Random House will not be coming. In response, the publisher flatly rejected all of Dunn's claims and then helpfully put in written display, something like warning heads on pikes, all of the prior litigation by both Dunn and others that Brown and the publisher have fended off successfully.  

There are several factors that should give Dunn and his legal team pause when it comes to actually filing this suit. Much of the reasoning by Dunn for filing this second lawsuit centers around his claim that the US ruling didn't properly evaluate the evidence he presented. That's unlikely to be the case. His reasoning for filing the suit in the UK, on the other hand, is flatly bizarre.

Dunn told MarketWatch he is now finalizing legal evidence in preparation for issuing copyright proceedings against Brown. Dunn, who is from Western Massachusetts, said “The Vatican Boys” was sold around New England upon publication, and he said he suspects Dan Brown read his book while he was living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the late 1990s.

Little of which factors at all as a basis for the UK being the proper venue for this lawsuit between two American authors. On top of that, it stretches the mind to believe that it has taken the better part of a decade for an author to come up with all of these dastardly similarities between his own work and one of the most widely read books in modern times. So too does it bend credulity to imagine that these newly discovered similarities are of the sort that are awarded copyright protection. After all, if the new evidence is more explosive than the old evidence, why wasn't it properly presented ten years ago?

We'll see if this suit ever gets filed. Given Brown's track record for defeating these sorts of attempts, I know on which party I'd be putting my money.

A few years ago, Russian whistleblowers like Lyudmila Savchuk began to reveal that Vladimir Putin had built a massive new internet propaganda machine. At the heart of this machine sat the "Internet Research Agency," a Russian government front company tasked with operating warehouses filled with employees paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation 24 hours a day. Initial reports on these efforts were often playful, suggesting little more than shitposting and memes.

Subsequent reports by folks like Adrian Chen at the New York Times highlighted in great detail how deep this particular rabbit hole went. Chen detailed how these efforts often went well beyond routine online trolling, and frequently extended into the real world (like the time online trolls urged American citizens to visit a Russian-operated Chelsea art gallery solely to try and distort and downplay the country's annexation of Crimea). By the summer of 2016, reports began to emerge that these same employees were also posing as Trump supporters to help stoke already raw political divisions in the States.

Fast forward to this week, when Russian newspaper RBC issued a fairly massive and comprehensive report (in Russian, the Guardian has an alternative take here) showing that these efforts went even further than most initial reports indicated. From the creation of popular Texas secessionist Facebook groups to the hiring of more than 100 U.S. activists who had no idea they were working for Russia -- all tasked with stoking division inside the United States:

Perhaps the most alarming element of the article was the claim that employees of the troll factory had contacted about 100 real US-based activists to help with the organisation of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report.

And while some on both sides of the political spectrum have tried to downplay Russia's propaganda and disinformation efforts as amateurish, unimportant and ineffective, the collective scope of the IRA's work revealed by whistleblowers continues to indicate otherwise:

Today, business site RBC revealed the numbers that allegedly made the company work. It reports that over two years the agency spent $2.3 million on its US operations. Most of that was spent on Russian staff—around 90 employees were working on the US at the height of the trolling campaign in 2016—but it also paid for 100 US activists to travel around America, organizing 40 rallies in US cities, and spent $120,000 spreading their message on Facebook. (The Silicon Valley giant has admitted that thousands of ads were bought under Russian IP addresses during the campaign.) The 100 activists didn’t suspect any Russian involvement in the funding, RBC reports.

In addition to the RBC report, Russian journalists at Dozhd interviewed a new whistleblower named "Maxim" who worked at the Internet Research Agency. According to Maxim, the organization included a "Russian desk," a "foreign desk," a "Facebook desk," and a "Department of Provocations." Whereas the Russian desk operated the country's now infamous Twitter bots and online trolls, the foreign desk was notably more sophisticated in its information assaults, trained in the more nuanced aspects of U.S. politics in order to "set Americans against their own government," and "provoke unrest and discontent."

Meanwhile, the Russian government's Facebook desk was tasked with battling Facebook administrators who would try to delete fake accounts and groups -- and who would often buckle to opposition from Russian trolls who raised First Amendment concerns when challenged:

"The troll farm also had its own "Facebook desk," whose function was to relentlessly push back against the platform's administrators who deleted fake accounts as they began gaining traction. When Internet Research Agency employees argued against having their accounts deleted, Max said, Facebook staffers would write back, "You are trolls." The trolls would in turn invoke the First Amendment right to free speech — occasionally, they won the arguments.

By the latter half of 2016, up to a third of the Internet Research Agency was tasked with stoking existing tensions ahead of the U.S. election, according to yet another report by Russian media outlet Meduza. Another whistleblower claims that the IRA's goal wasn't always specificlly to aid Trump, but to help encourage American infighting, contributing to partisan gridlock in the States (though the IRA's disinformation work is just one prong in Russia's efforts, and the Mueller investigation may obviously have more to say on this subject in time).

The RBC report notes that Chen's 2015 bombshell story in particular forced the Russian government to notably revamp its disinformation efforts, so what it looks like now is far from certain. What is certain is that Russia's online disinformation efforts -- a response to years of equally brazen efforts by the United States -- are just the latest in a multi-generational cold war that perpetually seeks to take horrible ideas to new and obnoxious levels. The biggest concern now isn't just how a country immeasurably susceptible to bullshit combats this kind of attack, but just how ham-fisted and harmful the United States' inevitable response will be.

It's amazing what effect a little public scrutiny has on government overreach. In the wake of inauguration day protests, the DOJ started fishing for information from internet service providers. First, it wanted info on all 1.2 million visitors of a protest website hosted by DreamHost. After a few months of bad publicity and legal wrangling, the DOJ was finally forced to severely restrict its demands for site visitor data.

Things went no better with the warrants served to Facebook. These demanded a long list of personal information and communications from three targeted accounts, along with the names of 6,000 Facebook users who had interacted with the protest site's Facebook page. Shortly before oral arguments were to be heard in the Washington DC court, the DOJ dropped its gag order.

The last minute removal of the gag order appears to have been done to avoid the establishment of unfavorable precedent. It looks like the government perhaps has further concerns about precedential limitations on warrants served to service providers. As Kate Conger reports for Engadget, the DOJ has decided to walk away from this particular warrant challenge.

In a court hearing today, the Department of Justice dropped its request for the names of an estimated 6,000 people who “liked” a Facebook page about an Inauguration Day protest, the American Civil Liberties Union said. The ACLU challenged several warrants related to protests against President Trump’s inauguration on Friday, one of which included the search, claiming they were over-broad.

The ACLU notes the judge seemed sympathetic to allegations of overreach. In response, the government has apparently reduced its demands to info from two arrested protestors' accounts and further limited the date range from which data is sought.

This isn't a good look for the government. Dropping demands before an order has been issued indicates the DOJ had some idea its demands were too broad. It also shows the government will make concessions, rather than risk adverse rulings.

Then there's the whole issue of seeking personal information on protesters. This sort of thing creates a very real chilling effect by threatening to turn over personal information to the same entity the protesters were protesting. Fortunately, the government has walked back most of its demands in both cases.

First, if you are someone who likes stepped-up ICE immigration enforcement and does not like "sanctuary cities," you might cheer the implications of this post, but it isn't otherwise directed at you. It is directed at the center of the political ven diagram of people who both feel the opposite about these immigration policies, and yet who are also championing SESTA. Because this news from Oakland raises the specter of a horrific implication for online speech championing immigrant rights if SESTA passes: the criminal prosecution of the platforms which host that discussion.

Much of the discussion surrounding SESTA is based on some truly horrific tales of sex abuse, crimes that more obviously fall under what the human trafficking statutes are clearly intended to address. But with news that ICE is engaging in a very broad reading of the type of behavior the human trafficking laws might cover and prosecuting anyone that happens to help an immigrant, it's clear that the type of speech that SESTA will carve out from Section 230's protection will go far beyond the situations the bill originally contemplated.

Some immigration rights activists are worried that ICE has recently re-defined the crime of human trafficking to include assistance, like housing and employment, that adults provide to juveniles who come to the United States without their parents. In many cases, the adults being investigated and charged are close relatives of the minors who are supposedly being trafficked.

Is ICE simply misreading the trafficking statutes? Perhaps, but it isn't necessarily a far-fetched reading. People in the EU who've merely given rides to Syrian (and other) refugees tired from trekking on foot have been prosecuted for trafficking. Yes that's Europe, not the US, but it's an example of how well-intentioned trafficking laws can easily be over-applied to the point that they invite absurd results, including those that end up making immigrants even more vulnerable to traffickers than they would have been without the laws.

So what does that have to do with SESTA? SESTA is drafted with language that presumes that sex trafficking laws are clearly and unequivocally good in their results. And what that Oakland example suggests is that this belief is a myth. Anti-immigrant forces within the government, both federal and state, can easily twist them against the very same people they were ostensibly designed to protect.

And that means they are free to come after the platforms hosting any and all speech related to the assistance of immigrants, if any and all assistance can be considered trafficking. The scope of what they could target is enormous: tweets warning about plain-clothed ICE agents at courthouses, search engine results for articles indicating whether evacuation centers will be checking immigration status, online ads for DACA enrollment assistance, or even discussion about sanctuary cities and the protections they afford generally. If SESTA passes, platforms will either have to presumptively censor all such online speech, or risk prosecution by any government or state entity with different views on immigration policy. Far from being the minor carve-out of Section 230 that SESTA's supporters insist it is, it instead is an invitation to drive an awful lot of important speech from the Internet that these same supporters would want to ensure we can continue to have.

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In a healthy, competitive market, cable providers would respond to the growing threat of streaming video competition by lowering prices, improving their historically awful customer service, and giving consumers more flexible cable bundles.

But because these same cable operators enjoy a growing monopoly over the uncompetitive broadband market -- they don't have to do that. Instead, they've found that the easiest response to added competition on the TV front is to impose a relentless array of rate hikes on captive broadband customers. There's a myriad of ways they accomplish this, ranging from misleading hidden fees that jack up the advertised price (something they're being sued for), to usage caps and overage fees (which let them not only charge more money for the same service, but hamstring streaming competitors via tricks like zero rating).

But with the U.S. entering a period of rubber stamp regulators, and a lack of telco upgrades resulting in less competition than ever, Wall Street is pressuring cable operators to also jack up the standalone price of broadband services outright. New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin recently predicted that a lack of broadband competition could allow cable providers like Comcast to double already expensive broadband prices over the next year. UBS analyst John Hodulik issued a research note the same week stating that cable operators should specifically jack up the price of standalone broadband service to $80 to $90 per month.

Not too surprisingly, cable operators are already heeding these demands. Analysis from Morgan Stanley this week indicated that cable operators had already hiked the cost of standalone broadband 12% from last year's rates:

"In a note to clients Tuesday, Morgan Stanley said that based on its own survey, cable TV companies hiked broadband prices by 12% to $66 monthly from a year earlier for customers that buy only high-speed internet and not a TV package.

"As video revenue growth is increasingly pressured, leaning on data pricing is tempting to sustain earnings," said Benjamin Swinburne, a Morgan Stanley analyst in a report."

Tempting, indeed. Especially when there's neither healthy market competition nor regulatory oversight there to stop companies like Comcast and Charter from doing so. Of course this is before you factor in all manner of additional costs that await consumers over the next few years, from the problems that will be caused by the mindless gutting of popular net neutrality protections, to the Trump administration's gutting of privacy rules that would have stopped ISPs from their stated goal of charging users more money if they want to protect their own privacy.

And instead of creating policies aimed at improving competition in what's clearly not a healthy market, the Trump administration's FCC is engaged in the mindless gutting of consumer protections, and the manipulation of data to try and pretend the broadband market's obvious problems don't actually exist.

Like seemingly every other government on the planet, the UK government wants internet companies like Google and Facebook to do more. Everyone has an axe to grind, whether it's not enough censorship, or the wrong kind of censorship, or the innate desire to hold companies accountable for the actions of their users. The voluntary moderation efforts made by these platforms always fall short of politicians' ideals. These legislators believe -- without evidence -- that perfectly moderated services are just a couple of button pushes away.

Because the things governments complain about are actually the words and deeds of users -- rather than the companies themselves -- pushes for "more" have limited effect. This doesn't make governments happy. This is a "problem" that needs "solving," apparently. And officials in the UK think they have an answer. They'll just arbitrarily redefine services until they're more easily pushed around.

Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, has said the government is considering changing the legal status of Google, Facebook and other internet companies amid growing concerns about copyright infringement and the spread of extremist material online.

The internet groups are considered conduits of information rather than publishers under UK law, meaning they have limited responsibility for what appears on their sites.

However, the chairman of the media regulator Ofcom said on Tuesday she believed the likes of Google and Facebook were publishers, raising the prospect that they could eventually face more regulation.

Before we delve into the bullshit that is redefining tech companies for easier regulation, let's take a look at the activities the UK government is treating as equals: terrorism and copyright infringement. Tell me that's not screwed up. I understand the government can be concerned about multiple online issues simultaneously, but while it may be conceivable the use of social media platforms by terrorists necessitates closer government scrutiny, mentioning infringement in the same breath cheapens the entire argument. It immediately makes it clear the endgame isn't curbing murderous acts that kill and injure dozens of people, but regulation of any sort of internet activity the government finds bothersome.

This is the slippery slope, delivered by a government official in a single sentence. Terrorism concerns make it easy to diminish freedoms and expand governmental control of communication services. Once it's set in motion, it remains in motion, moving from great evils like terrorism to comparatively minor quibbles like file sharing -- an activity that has yet to kill anyone. One is an existential threat. The other threatens nothing more than incumbents and their business models. Bradley's comment strongly suggests her ear's been bent nearly to the point of removal by entertainment lobbyists.

Moving beyond that, there's the problem with redefinition. You can't call a cat a dog just because more people register dogs than cats and you want to see that revenue stream increased. You can't call third parties publishers just because it makes it easier to hold them accountable for the actions of their users. If you head down this path, you invite every special interest group with a complaint about the internet to treat service providers as publishers. In short, you're asking to rain down litigation hell on tech companies with the end result being fewer services available for internet users.

If there's an upside, it's that the culture secretary views this definition shift as problematic.

I am looking into this. I am not sure the publisher definition in UK law would necessarily work in the way that people would like it to work. I think it would end up being very restrictive and make the internet not work in the way we want it to work.

But Bradley also wants the UK to be the "safest place to be online." It's hard to maintain a "free vibrant internet" while clamping down on everything the UK government considers to be dangerous. Website blocking by UK service providers already creates something far less free and vibrant than can be found elsewhere, and yet, it hasn't done much to make the UK much safer online, much less IRL.

Bradley may be hesitant to throw a different label on social media services, but the UK government as a whole hasn't exactly been shy about creating an AOL-esque Wee Britain online -- something that chills speech and deprives UK citizens of sources of information.

A few years ago, Verizon and AT&T were busted for covertly modifying wireless user data packets in order to track users around the internet. Verizon used the technology to track browsing behavior for two years before the practice was even discovered by security researchers. It took another six months of public shaming before Verizon was even willing to offer opt out tools. And while the FCC ultimately gave Verizon a $1.3 million wrist slap, it highlighted how we don't really understand the privacy implications of what mobile carriers are up to, much less have real standards in place to protect us from abuse in the modern mobile era.

While notably different in scope and application, these same companies were again caught this week collecting and selling user information without user consent or working opt out tools.

Earlier this week Philip Neustrom, co-founder of Shotwell Labs, discovered something interesting and documented his findings in this blog post. Neustrom discovered a pair of websites that, when visited by a mobile device over a cellular connection, appeared to easily glean numerous personal visitor details, including the visiting user's name, some billing and location data, and more. Users simply needed to input a zip code, and the carriers providing your cellular service seemingly provide a wide array of personal data to these services without user consent or an opt out.

On the surface, the intention behind these services isn't particularly nefarious. These websites are examples of fraud prevention services companies like Payfone offer to companies, employers and organizations to help verify a visitor is who they say they are. Visitors to a specific website have their data immediately cross-referenced with billing, phone number, or even GPS data that's provided by wireless carriers. The problem, as Neustrom documents, is that mobile carriers don't appear to be adequately informing users this data is being collected or sold:

"But what these services show us is even more alarming: US telcos appear to be selling direct, non-anonymized, real-time access to consumer telephone data to third party services — not just federal law enforcement officials — who are then selling access to that data. Given the trivial “consent” step required by these services and unlikely audit controls, it appears that these services could be used to track or de-anonymize nearly anyone with a cell phone in the United States with potentially no oversight.

He also found that the existing opt out mechanisms used by T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and other mobile carriers don't do a damn thing to prevent this data from being monetized:

"AT&T’s “consumer choice” opt-out at https://att.com/cmpchoice didn’t appear to do anything to stop this, even after waiting the stated 48 hours. All of the demos were still working for me on the morning of 2017–10–15 after I had opted out on 2017–10–13. Many users on Twitter and elsewhere also report that AT&T’s opt-out process doesn’t do anything here. Verizon’s “opt-out” pages also may not do anything to prevent this, either (A, B)."

The report was seemingly a bit too obscure to get much mainstream media attention, but obviously hit a nerve all the same. Shortly after publication, both websites -- and their previously public API documentation were pulled offline by Payfone. Similarly, video of a joint AT&T Danal presentation from 2014 explaining how this technology works was pulled from YouTube. The security community was surprised to learn of the technology, with some offering more concise analysis than others:

You'll recall that for years mobile carriers like Verizon argued that we don't need meaningful privacy protections because they always self-regulate within the boundaries of good taste. Carriers re-used this justification earlier this year when they convinced the Trump administration and GOP to kill FCC broadband privacy protections. But it's hard to hold these companies accountable for privacy violations when even security researchers aren't aware it's happening, and unlike the realm of Google, Facebook or other advertisers, a lack of competition in the telecom sector means less organic competitive pressure to behave.

This week's discovery is just another example of how mobile carrier self-regulation isn't working, and some modest rules requiring more transparency (and mandatory, opt out or opt in tools) would have been of immense public benefit.

eSports, the once fledgling video game competition industry, has undergone several milestones in rapid succession as it grows into a true entertainment player. Once relegated to online streaming broadcasts, mostly run out of a few Asian and Pacific Island countries, eSports is now regularly broadcast on American television, including by ESPN. From there, it was a fairly natural progression for universities to take notice and begin organizing school eSports teams, as well as offering scholarships for eAthletes.

But while these milestones are both important to and positive for the eSports industry, not all milestones will always be so happy. I would argue that it's a milestone of sorts that a real-world athletic apparel company, Adidas, is suing an eSports league over its logo. Turner Broadcasting has invested in a venture called ELEAGUE, which has been broadcasting eSports for the better part of two years. Turner registered several trademarks for ELEAGUE, including the following logo.

Regular Techdirt readers will have already guessed why Adidas has opposed the trademark for the logo. Going back for what feels like time immemorial, Adidas has jealously protected the broad but admittedly iconic three-stripes logo it has cultivated for itself. And while even we skeptics can carve out a space for Adidas to have a valid claim on that sort of mark, it's been Adidas' aggression in going after anyone using anything even remotely similar to three-stripes regardless of shared industries, notable variations in branding, or actual customer confusion.

Which doesn't keep the company lawyers from pretending otherwise in oppositions such as this one against ELEAGUE, of course.

The opposition is filed on two counts—confusion and dilution.

The first alleges that the similarity between the two logos, that they consist of three broken lines, and "the fact that their respective goods and services overlap or are otherwise closely related" means that the ELEAGUE logo could create the impression that events are sponsored or endorsed by Adidas. While Adidas acknowledges that it does not do business in esports—although it is the shirt sponsor of Counter-Strike team North—esports is "within the natural zone of expansion of adidas’s business and goods and services".

On the second count, Adidas contends that the similarity between the brands will dilute the strength of the Adidas logo as a hallmark of authentic Adidas goods. That, Adidas say, would damage their brand.

Again, I suppose it's a milestone of sorts that a big player like Adidas files a trademark opposition under the theory that real-world athletic apparel and eSports broadcasts are in related industries. Still, the claim is an obvious stretch. The actual ELEAGUE logo calls to mind the letter "E", not Adidas' stripes, and the associated branding throughout the rest of the logo act as a clear source identifier. Pained concerns about customer confusion on the part of Adidas would seem to be laughable on their face, nevermind the question as to why it took so long for Adidas to undertake this if there is so much customer confusion and dilution.

Turner Sports first filed the trademark application in June 2016, but it took Adidas until Oct. 10 of this year to file the opposition.

It sure seems like the kind of harm Adidas is claiming would have required hastier action than a year and half's worth of waiting. Hopefully those reviewing the opposition will take that into account and grant ELEAGUE its mark.