THE WASHINGTON PRO FOOTBALL FRANCHISE

As has been widely reported, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has ruled that “redskins” is deeply offensive slur and can not be federally registered as a trademark under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a), which prohibits registration of marks that contain “immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living…

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THE EMPIRE STRIKES OUT

It was some ten years ago, while the Boston Red Sox were still mired in the 86-year championship drought brought on by the Curse of the Bambino, that their president Larry Lucchino hung the moniker “Evil Empire” on the New York Yankees.  The Yankees, as Lucchino should have anticipated, took it as a compliment and good naturedly…

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GRADE PECULATION

As Professors Aufderheide and Jaszi write in their book Reclaiming Fair Use (Chicago 2011), “fair use  becomes real only when people use it; like a muscle, it can shrink with disuse.”  Kudos then to fulltime high school teacher Rob Rang and NFLdraftscout.com, for which Rang moonlights as an NFL Draft analyst.  It must have been…

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BOOK REPORT: "THE KNOCKOFF ECONOMY"

The over-arching economic problem that dogs all of American patent and copyright law is one of demarcation—when is the marginal utility of  an incentive provided to one innovator “to promote progress in science and the useful arts” outweighed by the burden it places on the creativity and economic freedom of everyone else and is therefore counterproductive?  In The…

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THE BIG GAMES IS UPON US

With the opening ceremonies of the Games of the XXX Olympiad just a few days away, the media are awash in stories about the U.S. Olympic Committee’s trademark bullying.  (Olympic Gyro, a mainstay of Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market, it is reported, has been pressured into changing its name to Olympia Gyro.)  The Committee’s aggressive tactics are…

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