Trademark disputes in the alcohol industries are often times absurd enough to make the comments section question whether everyone involved was simply drunk. While I'm sure the lawyers on all sides tend to be sober, every once in a while you read a claim in a big-boy legal document that makes you pause and wonder. And, then, sometimes the dispute centers around a public figure punning off his own notoriety, making the trademark claims extra ludicrous.

Meet Bob Dylan. Bob used to be a counterculture folksinger hero that eschewed the trappings of materialism and sang as one of the original social justice warriors. Present day Bob sings songs on car commercials and owns a Whiskey brand. And, hey, Bob's allowed to make money, no matter how jarring this might be to those born decades ago. His Heaven's Door Whiskey is, sigh, allowed to exist. It's also allowed to fight back against the absurd trademark lawsuit brought by Heaven's Hill Distillery over its logo and trade dress.

Heaven Hill Distillery has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Heaven’s Door Spirits, a whiskey line co-owned by Dylan that was released earlier this year. The company's name is a reference to Dylan’s 1973 song Knockin' on Heaven’s Door.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, argues that the Bardstown-based company was founded by the Shapira family shortly after prohibition ended in the 1930s and has used the trademark for more than 80 years. A Heaven Hill attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Chicago-based Heaven’s Door in April, saying the start-up distillery’s use of its trademark “will create a likelihood of confusion” with the Kentucky bourbon brand's products. The letter specifically notes that Heaven's Door has introduced a “stacked" logo similar to the one used by Heaven Hill.

Dylan's company responded saying it didn't believe there would be any public confusion over the logos and trade dress and that it wasn't going to be making any of the changes requested. When it comes to these disputes, it's useful to actually put the entire products next to one another to see how similar they are. Simple logos can sometimes be squinted at and seen as similar, but on the question of confusion in the marketplace you really have to put the products side by side and imagine yourself in a store trying to decide between the two. I've done that for you below.

It's frankly hard to imagine how anyone is going to be confused between these two liquor brands. The bottle shape is different. The label placement is different. The fonts aren't the same and neither are the color schemes for the labels. Even the logos themselves aren't particularly similar, stacked or otherwise. And, of course, there is the mockup of the ironwork sculpting on Dylan's bottle, modeled after his own iron sculpting artwork. Even the name of the brand is a reference to Dylan. How any of this adds up to market confusion is beyond me.

And, yet, Heaven Hill essentially wants to scuttle Dylan's whiskey business altogether.

The lawsuit is asking a judge to grant a temporary injunction prohibiting Heaven’s Door from producing, distributing or marketing until the lawsuit is concluded. In addition, attorneys for Heaven Hill want a judge to force Heaven’s Door to “deliver up for destruction or other disposition all goods, packaging, containers, advertisements, promotions, signs, displays” with their company name.The suit is also seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Somehow, despite this suit, I would guess that Dylan's whiskey will continue to be released.

For quite some time now, we've been trying to demonstrate just how impossible it is to expect internet platforms to do a consistent or error-free job of moderating content. Especially at the scale they're at, it's an impossible request, not least because so much of what goes into content moderation decisions is entirely subjective about what's good and what's bad, and not everyone agrees on that. It's why I've been advocating for moving controls out to the end users, rather than expecting platforms to be the final arbiters. It's also part of the reason why we ran that content moderation game at a conference a few months ago, in which no one could fully agree on what to do about the content examples we presented (for every single one there were at least some people who argued for keeping the content up or taking it down).

On Twitter, I recently joked that anyone with opinions on content moderation should first have to read Professor Kate Klonick's recent Harvard Law Review paper on The New Governors: The People, Rules and Processes Governing Online Speech, as it's one of the most thorough and comprehensive explanations of the realities and history of content moderation. But, if reading a 73 page law review article isn't your cup of tea, my next recommendation is to spend an hour listening to the new Radiolab podcast, entitled Post No Evil.

I think it provides the best representation of just how impossible it is to moderate this kind of content at scale. It discusses the history of content moderation, but also deftly shows how impossible it is to do it at scale with any sort of consistency without creating new problems. I won't ruin it for you entirely, but it does a brilliant job highlighting how as the scale increases, the only reasonable way to deal with things is to create a set of rules that everyone can follow. And then you suddenly realize that the rules don't work. You have thousands of people who need to follow those rules, and they each have a few seconds to decide before moving on. And as such, there's not only no time for understanding context, but there's little time to recognize that (1) content has a funny way of not falling within the rules nicely and (2) no matter what you do, you'll end up with horrible results (one of the examples in the podcast is one we talked about last year, explaining the ridiculous results, but logical reasons, for why Facebook had a rule that you couldn't say mean things about white men, but could about black boys).

The most telling part of the podcast is the comparison between two situations, in which the content moderation team at Facebook struggled over what to do. One was a photo that went viral during the Boston Marathon bombings a few years ago, showing some of the carnage created by the bombs. In the Facebook rulebook was a rule against "gore" that basically said you couldn't show a person's "insides on the outside." And yet, these photos did that. The moderation team said that they should take it down to follow the rules (even though there was vigorous debate). But, they were overruled by execs who said "that's newsworthy."

But this was then contrasted with another viral video in Mexico of a woman being beheaded. Many people in Mexico wanted it shown, in order to document and alert the world of the brutality and violence that was happening there, which the government and media were mostly hiding. But... immediately people around the world freaked out about the possibility that "children" might accidentally come across such a video and be scarred for life. The Facebook content moderation team said leave it up, because it's newsworthy... and the press crushed Facebook for being so callous in pushing gore and violence... so top execs stepped in again to say that video could no longer be shown.

As the podcast does a nice job showing, these are basically impossible situations, in part because there are all different reasons why some people may want to see some content, and others should not see it. And we already have enough trouble understanding the context of the content, let alone the context of the viewer in relation to the content.

I've been seeing a microcosm of this myself in the last few days. After my last post about platforms and content moderation around the Alex Jones question, Twitter's Jack Dorsey was kind enough to tweet about it (even though I questioned his response to the whole mess). And, so for the past week or so I've been getting notified of every response to that tweet, which seems pretty equally divided between people who hate Alex Jones screaming about how Jack is an idiot for not banning Jones and how he's enabling hate mongers, and people who love Alex Jones screaming about how Jack is silencing dissent and how he's a liberal asshole silencing conservatives.

And no matter where on the spectrum of responses you may fall (or even totally outside of that spectrum), it should come down to this: we shouldn't be leaving these decisions up to Jack. Or Mark. Yes, those companies can and must do a better job, but what people fail to realize is that the job we're asking them to do is literally an impossible one. And that's why we really should be looking to move away from the situation in which they even need to be doing it. My solution is to move the controls outwards to the ends, allowing individuals and third parties to make their own calls. But there may be other solutions as well.

But something that is not a solution is merely expecting that these platforms can magically "get it right."

As expected, Mozilla, 22 State attorneys general, INCOMPAS, and numerous consumer groups this week asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate FCC net neutrality rules. The state AGs, led by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, filed a lawsuit back in January attempting to overturn the repeal, arguing that the decision will ultimately be a "disaster for New York consumers and businesses." Mozilla and a few other companies also filed suit, as well as consumer groups including Free Press and Public Knowledge.

The AG's statement-- as well as the brief (pdf) filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late Monday night--not only urges the court to restore the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules, but asks the court to scuttle ISP and FCC efforts to block states from protecting consumers:

"The government petitioners’ brief focuses on two critical issues: first, that the FCC’s order is arbitrary and capricious because it puts consumers at risk of abusive practices by broadband providers, jeopardizes public safety, and more; and second, that the FCC’s order unlawfully purports to preempt state and local regulation of broadband service."

As we've noted previously, both Comcast and Verizon successfully lobbied the FCC to include language in its "Restoring Internet Freedom" order that attempts to "pre-empt" (read: neuter) state authority over broadband ISPs. ISPs like Charter (Spectrum) have already tried to use this language to wiggle out of state lawsuits over terrible service and false advertising, though the courts so far haven't thought much of the effort. ISPs have threatened to sue states that try to pass state level net neutrality laws in response to federal apathy, but those suits have yet to materialize.

While Facebook and Google have been largely AWOL from the net neutrality fight this go round, INCOMPAS also jumped into the mix this week, issuing its own filing and statement getting to the crux of the issue, a lack of competition in broadband:

"At its core, net neutrality is a competition issue. The FCC’s own order acknowledged that nearly 50 percent of consumers are living in a broadband monopoly. Yet, in the face of a brazenly uncompetitive marketplace, the FCC abandoned two decades of bipartisan consensus that ISPs should not block, throttle, implement paid prioritization, or otherwise harm online content by engaging in anticompetitive behavior.

"The FCC also refused to consider extremely relevant findings from previous merger investigations involving ISPs that control access to almost 65 percent of consumers, which found that despite their public statements to the contrary, ISPs have the means and motive to interfere with online content they perceive as a threat."

US telecom, a lobbying organization primarily funded and managed by AT&T, issued a statement responding to the filings that claimed the repeal of net neutrality was no big deal because the internet has yet to implode:

"As this case winds its way through federal court, it is worth noting what has not happened since the FCC’s order: the internet as we know it is still thriving, growing, open and continues to spin on its axis. The predictions made by some that ISPs would engage in throttling, blocking, and anti-competitive prioritization, have not happened."

Of course ISPs like AT&T have only behaved so far because they know this lawsuit could easily go badly, and they're not keen on adding any fuel to the fire before the court fight heats up (oral arguments should arrive sometime in the fall). All of today's filers are eager to show that the FCC not only violated agency procedures, but violated laws like the Administrative Procedures Act by basing such a stark reversal of policy on little more than fluff and nonsense.

Last week, Tim Cushing had a post about yet another out of control automated DMCA notifier, sending a ton of bogus notices to Google (most of which Google removed from its search engine index, since the sender, "Topple Track" from Symphonic Distribution was a part of Google's "Trusted Copyright Program," giving those notices more weight). The post listed many of the perfectly legitimate content that got removed from Google's index because of that rogue automated filter, including an EFF page about a lawsuit, the official (authorized) pages of Beyonce and Bruno Mars, and a blog post about a lawsuit by Professor Eric Goldman.

But, seeing as we're getting towards September when the EU Parliament will again be voting on the big Copyright Directive proposal there, including Article 13, which will require mandatory filters or other automated tools for preventing copyright infringement, I thought it was important to do a separate post calling out one of the other pages taken down by Symphonic Distribution's out of control Topple Track. And that was that it got Google to de-index an article by Julia Reda, a member of the EU Parliament who has been leading the charge against the problematic provisions in the Copyright Directive proposal.

Specifically -- and it would be hard to make this up if we tried -- Topple Track's automated filter got Google to de-index this blog post by Reda, in which she details the problems in Article 13 and how it will create mandatory censorship machines, that would likely lead to massive internet censorship of perfectly legitimate content.

Let's repeat that so it can sink in. An automated filter helped take down an article by a Member of the EU Parliament, explaining how a (still being debated) proposal would create automated filtering systems that would take down all sorts of legitimate content.

This feels like the sort of thing that should end all debate about just how damaging Article 13 might be (though, of course, it won't). When you force more mandatory filters onto the internet, these kinds of problems will only increase. Tons and tons of legitimate and perfectly legal content will get blocked. Last month, we posted a useful demonstration of just how much legitimate content would get censored under such a plan, but we never imagined that a perfect example would present itself just weeks later showing just how bad an idea Article 13 is.

The US government isn't supposed to seek general warrants. And US judges aren't supposed to approve them. The Fourth Amendment requires a showing of probable cause to justify the intrusion by the government into citizens' lives and property. None of that appears to have happened in this case, brought to us by Thomas Fox-Brewster at Forbes.

Back in March, as it investigated a spate of armed robberies across Portland, Maine, the FBI made an astonishing, unprecedented request of Google. The feds wanted the tech giant to find all users of its services who’d been within the vicinity of at least two of nine of those robberies. They limited the search to within 30-minute timeframes around when the crimes were committed. But the request covered a total space of 45 hectares and could’ve included anyone with an Android or iPhone using Google’s tools, not just the suspect.

This wasn't just a demand for device IDs. The FBI -- as detailed in the warrant request [PDF] -- wanted everything Google had on hand.

In addition, for any Google accounts linked to the accounts or identifiers listed in Attachment A by HTTP cookies, recovery email address, or telephone number, the Provider is required to disclose all records or other information regarding the identification of the account, to include full name, physical address, telephone numbers and other identifiers, records of session times and durations, the date on which the account was created, the length of service, the IP address used to register the account, log-in IP addresses associated with session times and dates, account status, alternative email addresses provided during registration, methods of connecting, log files, and means and source of payment (including any credit or bank account number).

This is the sort of rummaging the Constitution is supposed to prevent. It's understandable the FBI needed some assistance tracking down robbery suspects, but this grab for a wealth of information about 45 hectares of people milling about minding their own business, isn't. And this sort of thing isn't limited to the FBI. As was covered here earlier this year, the Raleigh PD did the same thing at least four times during criminal investigations in 2017.

In this case, hundreds of people would have been swept up in the dragnet. Certainly, some post-acquisition data sifting would have occurred to narrow it down to people/devices near the location of robberies when they occurred. But whatever happens after info is obtained cannot be used to justify the original acquisition. This warrant never should have been signed.

If there's any good news coming out of this, it's that Google either didn't hand over the info requested or didn't have the info requested on hand.

Google was expected to return the information on April 19, but didn’t. The FBI filed a motion to extend the time it had to get the data, which a judge granted. But Google never handed it over, despite another three FBI motions to extend. Though the prosecutor, assistant U.S. attorney Michael Conley, said a fifth motion would be filed if the data didn’t arrive, the government gave up the ghost earlier this month.

A final returned warrant, dated August 6, simply stated: “Google did not provide information responsive to the warrant.”

The reason for this is unknown. Google provided no comment to Forbes and Brewster-Smith points out the company never filed an objection to warrant itself. It's hard to believe Google didn't have any of this info on hand -- especially considering Google has collected location data even when device users have turned location services off. If nothing else, it should have had some data points on hand. Perhaps there was a lot of discussion behind the scenes between lawyers from both sides that never made it to court but did result in the FBI's please-don't-call-it-"general" warrant being denied.

It also may be the FBI didn't press the issue because it didn't have much confidence in securing a favorable ruling from a judge higher-placed than the magistrate that signed the warrant request. The last thing the FBI wants is precedent set forbidding this sort of collection effort.

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Back in 2010, we posted an infographic from The Root showing just how little money that was spent on music actually went to the artist:

In 2015, using a report put out by Ernst & Young, we put together our own graphics showing how much of streaming went to the actual artists:

You may be noticing a pattern? Very little of the money being made actually goes to the artist. Now we have even more data on this. Citibank recently released a massive and incredibly thorough report on the entire music industry showing how and where the money is made. There's lots of interesting and useful information in the report, but the headline grabbing fact is that musicians end up with just about 12% of global music revenue. As I said, the report is incredibly thorough (and a really useful read if you want to get a sense of just how convoluted and complex the music business really is), but the key is that there was ~$43 billion spent on music in 2017. Approximately $25 billion of that went to everyone (outside of the labels) who helped make the music available: digital streaming services, retail stores, concert venues:

That leaves $18.2 billion in money distributed out to the labels. But of that amount, only about $5 billion actually goes to artists, which means right around 12% goes to artists:

Of course, it's especially notable that a significant chunk of that revenue going to artists actually comes from... live performances:

This shouldn't be a surprise. Hell, we've spent the better part of two decades here talking about how artists need to embrace "scarcities" where they can make money, with live shows being a big part of that. And we kept having people from the recording industry scream about us saying that, but the numbers above don't lie. Citibank notes that one of the big reasons live drives so much artist revenue: You don't have the same amount of monopolistic middlemen sucking the artists dry:

If we divide artists’ incomes into four groups — Concerts, Music Platforms (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Sirius, FM radio), Music Publishing, and Music Sales (CD, digital downloads) — it’s clear that concerts have, by a wide margin, contributed most significantly to the growth in an artist’s income. That’s because music labels don’t directly participate in concert economics. But, they do participate in the revenues collected by the various music platforms (like Spotify, Apple, Sirius and YouTube).

That statement isn't 100% accurate, as many artists these days are signed to so-called 360 contracts, in which some of their live revenue also goes to the labels, but the general concept holds. In short, reading through this report, you see that the entire music ecosystem is a huge mess. And it's not hard to see how this developed. Basically with each new layer of innovation, rather than rethinking how we handle music and copyright, we simply slapped on another set of royalties and rights. That's why there are so many different kinds of royalties that have to be paid to do basically anything in music (synch rights, mechanicals, performance rights and more for each the sound recording and the composition). In the Citibank report they show this nice graphic, which I'd argue overly simplifies the reality:

But each of these really seems to be a use of copyright to prop up another set of middlemen, and remove the effects of competition and innovation from ever touching them. And so we keep building this ever more convoluted house of cards, built on a giant mess of a copyright system, where massive inefficiencies mean that these propped up middlemen end up taking home most of the money.

And, as the Citibank report nicely summarizes, thanks to the internet, artists could connect much more directly with fans and take home a lot more money:

Oh, and the real kicker in all of this? For years, the record labels (and some musicians) have been screaming about how piracy is to blame for people no longer spending on music. Except, of course, that's hogwash. As we pointed out a few years back with our very own Sky is Rising report (and, to a lesser extent, with our Carrot or the Stick? report) there's still plenty of spending happening on music. Indeed, the Citibank report shows consumer spending at an all time high:

In short, lots of money is still going towards music, but thanks to a ridiculous historical legacy of copyright law that kept piling on new rights, rather than cleaning out obsolete ones, there's a massive inefficient infrastructure whose only purpose basically seems to be to collect a bunch of the money for themselves, leaving 12 cents on the dollar for the actual artists.

Last week we noted how an FCC "oversight" hearing fell well short of anything actually resembling, well, actual oversight. Three FCC staffers had just been caught making up a DDOS attack and misleading Congress, the press and the FBI about it -- yet the subject was was barely even broached by lawmakers on either side of the aisle. It was another embarrassing example of the absence of anything resembling genuine accountability at the agency.

Fortunately one subject that did get a little attention was the FCC's comically-terrible broadband maps, something we've covered at great lengths here at Techdirt. If you want to see our terrible broadband maps at work, you need only go visit the FCC's $300+ million broadband availability map, which is based on the Form 477 data collected from ISPs. If you plug in your address, you'll find that not only does the FCC not include prices (at industry behest), the map hallucinates speed and ISP availability at most U.S. addresses.

For example, at my home in Seattle there's only one real ISP available: Comcast. But according to the FCC's data, I supposedly have seven broadband providers to choose from:

Three of those options (CenturyLink DSL, CenturyLink fiber, and Startouch Broadband) don't actually exist at my address, something I've confirmed with company engineers. Another three are satellite broadband providers, whose sky-high latency, high prices and daily or monthly usage caps make the services barely qualify as real broadband. That again leaves just Comcast as my only fixed line broadband option (aka a monopoly) in Seattle, supposedly one of the bigger tech-oriented cities in America. If you plug your address into the FCC's map you'll likely see similarly-misleading results.

As the FCC eyes where to deploy $4.5 billion in new rural broadband subsidies, more and more lawmakers are growing annoyed at the FCC's failure on this front. That includes Senator Jon Tester, who at last week's hearing proclaimed that the FCC's broadband maps "stink", and figuratively suggested that somebody (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) should have their "ass kicked" for the failure:

"We've got to kick somebody's ass," he told the chairman. Pai joked that the FCC would take that as a figurative, rather than literal, congressional directive. Tester aligned himself with Democrat Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel's comment that without good maps, a lot of money would be unnecessarily spent. Tester also said he was pleased Verizon was rolling out 5G in Indianapolis and other big markets, but said he was afraid they would never get it in Montana."

While hearing attendees giggled and chortled about this figurative ass kicking somebody was supposed to receive, nobody actually addressed why this has been a problem for the better part of the last two decades. The real reason our broadband maps remain terrible is that telecom monopolies would prefer the public and lawmakers not receive an accurate picture of American broadband, lest somebody notice the mammoth deployment gaps and the countless American markets that lack any meaningful broadband competition whatsoever (especially at faster speeds).

The source of the FCC's mapping data is the Form 477 data the agency collects from ISPs. This data has long been overly optimistic, and historically nobody really audits data provided by ISPs with a vested interest in downplaying deployment and competitive gaps. Worse, FCC policy dictates that the FCC deems an area "served" with broadband if just one ISP in a census tract has broadband. When somebody suggests that we should perhaps improve this data collection methodology, large ISPs like AT&T and Verizon pretty routinely lobby to prevent that from actually happening.

For example, when the previous, Wheeler-run FCC suggested we improve this methodology (pdf), Verizon complained in a filing (pdf) that more accurate data would be too costly and difficult for Verizon to adhere to:

"...the Commission must ensure that the costs of any new broadband data collection requirements do not outweigh the benefits. With respect to the Form 477, the Commission should avoid collecting data that is so detailed or voluminous that it is expensive for providers to produce, difficult for the Commission to process, or unhelpful to the public."

Again though, ISPs like Verizon aren't really worried about cost, the benefits to the public or how much work FCC staffers would have to do to process it, they're simply worried that if we had accurate broadband maps, somebody might realize that U.S. broadband is a terrible hodgepodge of barely-motivated monopolies abusing angry and captive customers. Accurate data would highlight how Verizon has all but given up on upgrading or repairing aging DSL in countless states, and pricing data specifically would show how Americans pay some of the highest prices for the slowest service among all developed nations.

Once Ajit Pai was appointed FCC head, efforts to shore up broadband mapping were quickly forgotten. And again, you'd think that somebody at last week's "oversight" hearing might have pointed this out. Instead, hearing attendees pretended that the United States' terrible broadband maps had simply mysteriously materialized out of the ether, a blameless phenomenon apparently caused by shadowy gremlins. In reality, it's long been abundantly clear why nobody wants to fix the problem: deep-pocketed ISPs by the name of Verizon, Comcast, Charter and AT&T don't want the problem fixed.

If more accurate data further highlighted the massive problems in the U.S. broadband market, somebody might just get the crazy idea to actually fix it, and we certainly wouldn't want that. Instead, for several decades now, the FCC and U.S. lawmakers have happily donned their ISP-provided rose-colored glasses, then played dumb when their real world experience doesn't quite add up.

Governments -- which will process requests from citizens in statutorily-required time almost zero percent of the time -- never think the private sector moves fast enough. The government says "Jump" and then immediately asks why the jumping wasn't already in progress when it ordered the jumping to commence.

Content that isn't even of the "I know it when I see it" variety isn't being taken down quickly enough for the EU. Various members have implemented their own 24-hour policies for the removal of everything from "hate speech" to "extremist content" -- both particularly difficult to classify immediately when context and newsworthiness must be considered.

The EU Commission is reeling in the leash it has attached to US social media companies. It pitched the idea back in March but now appears to following through with its threats. The latest move towards impossibility is detailed by The Financial Times.

Brussels plans to force companies including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to identify and delete online terrorist propaganda and extremist violence or face the threat of fines.

The European Commission has decided to abandon a voluntary approach to get big internet platforms to remove terror-related videos, posts and audio clips from their websites, in favour of tougher draft regulation due to be published next month.

Here's the stipulation that will turn popular social media sites into EU-owned ATMs.

Although details of the regulation are still being drawn up inside the commission, a senior EU official said the draft legislation was likely to impose a limit of one hour for platforms to delete material flagged as terrorist content by police and law enforcement bodies.

Imagine imposing this sort of time limit on anything a government agency does. Imagine the outcry about the impossibility of serving citizens in a timely fashion. But nothing's too short for the private sector, which can set about nuking content indiscriminately just in case, rather than write checks to the EU on an hourly basis.

The impetus is recent terrorist attacks, of course. Any amount of ridiculousness can be excused in the name of public safety and national security, even if the resulting mess has almost zero impact on either of those two concerns.

The incumbent social media sites already have algorithms and live moderation teams addressing questionable content. And it's still not enough for insatiable government officials. Entrants into the market may as well not even bother. They cannot hope to stay alive, much less compete, if governments are going to hold them directly responsible for content posted by their users.

Then there's the fact that burying stuff as soon as it shows up does little to aid investigations or the pursuit of terrorists. Ask anyone who's witnessed the damage done to law enforcement efforts by SESTA/FOSTA -- a law touted as a crushing blow to human trafficking. All it's done is make traffickers harder to find by forcing them to utilize less visible platforms and communication methods. The same thing is happening here and every time "terrorist content" is nuked, it makes martyrs of villains and proves to acolytes and new recruits the West is out to get them.

The EU would be better off letting the voluntary measures already in place go to work. The press for one-hour turn time reeks of rent collection, not honest concerns about public safety.

We've often made the point in the past that much of the trademark legal strife and bullying that occurs throughout the country ought to be squarely blamed on a USPTO that can't be bothered to put much thought into the trademarks it approves. All too often, the Trademark Office acts as a mindless rubber stamping facility, pushing through the application paperwork without thinking about the broader consequences of its approvals, nor the legal minutia involved into what makes a term a valid trademark. That bureaucratic lethargy is precisely how you get trademark bullies wielding trademarks that should never have been granted. And, because trademark bullying generally works, it's rare that anyone outside the USPTO is actually forced to clean up this mess it created.

But, on rare occasions, sanity puts a win up on the board. Such is the case with Express Homebuyers USA of Virginia, which defeated WBH Marketing Inc.'s trademark suit in which the latter claimed infringement based on its registered trademark for the phrase "We Buy Houses."

In a thorough and well-reasoned decision, Judge T.S. Ellis, III, of the Eastern District of Virginia, concluded that the federal trademarks “We Buy Houses” and “Webuyhouses.com” are generic, are not protected under trademark law, and therefore should be canceled. The court found that the phrase “we buy houses” has been used in the real estate industry since as early as 1898 in millions of newspapers and advertisements. That evidence, coupled with other evidence and the testimony of Express Homebuyer’s CEO Brad Chandler, was “overwhelming and unrefuted.”

Finding that the marks are generic and should be canceled was “logical” according to Judge Ellis because “allowing one member [of the real estate industry] to have exclusive use of the phrase ‘we buy houses’ would be the equivalent of allowing a professional football team to trademark ‘we play football’ or a fast-food chain to trademark ‘we sell burgers,’” which are phrases that should be available for all to use.

First, if the name T.S. Ellis is ringing in your ears, yes, he's the judge presiding over the Paul Manafort trial. That isn't relevant to this case, other than being an encouraging sign that the judge overseeing Manafort's case has some grasp of common sense. Beyond that, this case should be a wonderful counterexample for any proponents of the USPTO's staff when it comes to the job they do in approving trademarks. To approve "We Buy Houses" for the real estate market as a trademark requires such a dearth of cognition as to undermine every other bit of work that office does. As Ellis points out, allowing one entity in real estate to lock up the phrase would enable the exact kind of bullying that WBH Marketing subsequently engaged in by going after Express Homebuyers for daring to say that it too, yes, buys homes.

If the ruling had gone the other way, it would have been an unmitigated disaster for the real estate industry writ large.

The ruling is significant because, if Mr. Brandt’s company prevailed, thousands of real estate investors across the country could have been prohibited from using the vitally important phrase “we buy houses” in their marketing and advertising materials.

Having concluded that the trademarks “We Buy Houses” and “Webuyhouses.com” were generic and should be canceled, Judge Ellis also dismissed WBH Marketing’s claim that Express Homebuyers infringed on the trademarks. Judge Ellis thus threw out WBH’s multimillion dollar damages claim against Express Homebuyers.

This country is practically starving for this kind of result for trademark bullies. Too often these bullies are allowed to cut and run from trademark suits when it's clear their own trademarks are in danger of invalidation. Why in the world WBH Marketing elected to let this thing get to a ruling is completely beyond me, but invalidating bad trademarks that the USPTO is only too happy to approve can't be fully a function of bullying hubris.

But for this case, at least, the right outcome was achieved.