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Break

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

After some website problems, the theme/look of this blog got reverted.  I’ll fix it soon.

Also, I’m on hiatus until I can figure a better way to make this blog work exactly like I dream it will.

Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Scrabulous Update

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wired has a short update about the Scrabulous nonsense. Looks like we’ll know a bit more about what’s going down in the next couple of days.

Filed in Facebook, Mattel, Scrabble | Comments (0)

Mattel vs. Scrabulous

Thursday, January 17, 2008

There’s been a few news reports like this one on Salon indicating that Mattel is starting to take note of the Facebook Scrabble application, known as Scrabulous. (Full disclosure: I’m addicted to this Facebook app.)

Apparently the toy companies have asked Facebook to shut the application down, based on intellectual property claims. Can they? Should they? What’s the point?

Yes, no, money: those are the answers.

Mattel’s best argument against Scrabulous is a trademark infringement. Clearly the mark “SCRABULOUS” is similar to “SCRABBLE,” and it may be a safe assumption that many people think Scrabulous is indeed an official product. Consumer confusion, unfortunately, could be relatively high. And since the Scrabulous app is exactly the same game as Scrabble, that certainly doesn’t help. Also, I do believe that Mattel has an online version of Scrabble you can play somewhere; there is some competition here. Because of this, I do not think it’s IPWNage.

That said, as The Machinist on Salon noted, this is an extremely short-sighted view by Mattel. Borrowing from the worst offenders of IPWNing, Mattel is similarly angering all their internet-savvy fans. Who do they think they are - Prince? In fact, let’s just name this after him: The Prince Principle - not appreciating those who appreciate you, and actively telling them to screw off.

Anyway, so what can Scrabulous do?

Ideally, Mattel would say, thanks for drumming up business for us and making a new generation of Scrabble fans, carry on!

More hopefully, Mattel and the Scrabulous people will work out some licensing deal, and the application will live on. That way fans are happy, Mattel gets a piece of the Facebook market (which is huge), Scrabulous stays the same. (I don’t count on this: Mattel has a history of litigiously trying to shut down others via their IP ownership. Though they don’t always win, they try — see, the Aqua “Barbie Doll” song case, artists using Barbie in their art, etc.)

Worst case scenario: Scrabulous changes its name, some of the rules so as not to be exactly Scrabble, and nobody uses it anymore.

I’ll guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Filed in Facebook, Mattel, Scrabble, copyrights, trademarks | Comments (0)

Barack Obama’s Trademark

Monday, January 14, 2008

Check out Under Consideration for a great piece about Barack Obama’s trademark. I mean, his literal trademark, not his terrific speaking ability. The logo has an extremely flexible design, and as they note, that type of flexibility is usually left to such huge brands as MTV or McDonald’s.

Filed in brands, politics, trademarks | Comments (0)

Radiohead Remixer Gets Cease & Desist Letter

Friday, January 4, 2008

Pitchfork has a bit about Radiohead’s publisher sending a cease & desist letter to a DJ who created some remixes of their latest album, In Rainbows. IPWNed! *sigh*

Filed in IPwnage, Radiohead, ceaseanddesist, music | Comments (0)

Citation Needed

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

BoingBoing has a cool link to a new culture-jamming idea: posting Wikipedia-influenced “Citation Needed” stickers on ads.

Filed in culture jam, wikipedia | Comments (0)

RIAA Accuses Everyone Of Copyright Infringement

Monday, December 31, 2007

A few years ago in the Supreme Court Grokster case, Grokster’s lawyer claimed (PDF):

The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.

But now Here’s an article about a new case against an evil downloader, in which the RIAA’s argument is the exact opposite. Nowadays they claim that even making personal copies of legally purchased CDs is an infringing act.

As EFF explains here (in #4), the law is not completely settled in the US on this, even though it’s common sense, and that’s probably why the RIAA is finally making this argument.

But personal back-ups of something you purchased should be considered fair use, it’s not diminishing commercial value when it is strictly for personal use. In many countries, personal copies are infringing, so maybe this case can settle it in the US.

Hat tips: Talking Points Memo and Boing Boing! and my friend comat0se.

New Year’s Resolution: to ramble more on IPWNed. I may allow myself more digressions from IP to make this resolution more viable. :)

Filed in RIAA, downloading, music | Comments (0)

Fake Wine Labels: Why IP Law Is Needed.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

LA Weekly has an interesting article about high-priced wine labels fooling consumers (including Sammy Hagar). I am sure that sometimes I can sound anti-IP, with my ire towards IPWNage. But in fact I am quite the opposite, and it is things like this which explain why. Trademark law is at its core an area of consumer protection, and in any trademark case, the effect on the consumer comes first.

Copyrights are much less aligned with this, by their nature, but that does not change my attitudes towards copyright law: there should be a balance struck between the IP-owner and the public domain.

Filed in general, trademarks, wine | Comments (1)

Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. Californication

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

TMZ is reporting that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are suing the Showtime TV show, Californication. The Peppers, as you may be aware, had an album called Californication a few yaers back. Anthony Keidis is quoted as saying, “Californication is the signature CD, video and song of the band’s career. For some TV show to come along and steal our identity is not right.”

This article explains the legal history of titles. Basically, there needs to be some sort of relevance to using another’s name as your title, while keeping care not to confuse anyone about any sort of official endorsement. The famous cases are about a film called “Ginger & Fred” which did not have anything to do with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair, the (awesome) Outkast song entitled “Rosa Parks,” and the (awful) Aqua song called “Barbie Doll.”

What these cases come down to is what is in the Trademark Code (the Lanham Act in the US), which as the article explains, it is only infringement if “the title has no artistic relevance to the underlying work whatsoever, or, if it has some artistic relevance, unless the title explicitly misleads as to the source or content of the work.”

So first, if the court decides that the Peppers’ get trademark rights to the word they made up, “CALIFORNICATION,” then they’ll have to look to see if Showtime was misleading people, building on the Chili Peppers’ fame to develop their own (because I do believe there is some artistic relevance between the word and what the show is about).

There are some interesting arguments made in the Peppers’ complaint. They argue that if a consumer searches for “Californication” in iTunes, they get results of both Peppers’ music and the soundtrack/episodes of the TV show. An interesting point! Nowadays with the internet, music and TV are delivered the same way. They may actually be in direct competition, which could be problematic in allowing the show the word.

The end result remains to be seen. I think it would problematic if the show were called “Red Hot Chili Peppers” and not about the band or cooking, but believe that using an album title–albeit a popular one–is fair play.

Filed in Californication, Red Hot Chili Peppers, TV, music, trademarks | Comments (0)

This Is What It Sounds Like When Prince Cries

Monday, November 12, 2007

Oh let’s just see how many Prince pun headlines I can come up with!

First, I enjoyed this interview with the webmasters of one of the targeted websites.

Rolling Stone has an article, which includes this gem of a quote from Web Sheriff, a company which enforces copyrights on the web for people:

When Rolling Stone talked to John Giocobbi, the Managing Director of copyright protection agency Web Sheriff, regarding Prince’s battle with YouTube, Giocobbi said, “Prince has always been a very independently minded artist and kind of bold and pioneering in a way. It goes back largely to the kind of promise he had with Warner Bros., when he lost the right to use his own name and then he became The Artist Formerly Known As. And once he recovered his scars from that battle, he was a lot more savvy as a result of that too. And he’s a lot more kind of protective about his rights.” When asked whether the Web Sheriff is just going after illegal bootlegging of Prince videos, Giocobbi admitted that, “In essence we’re going after everything, which is why it’s kind of pioneering.”

This isn’t a pioneering move, it’s a backwards step, to try to kill fansites with extremely overbroad cease & desist letters and threats of prosecution. Keep up the good work!

Further, as to the Prince vs. Youtube news from a few months ago, according to this report, Prince is preparing to sue Pirate Bay. Pirate Bay bittorrents lots of pirated copies of music and movies, and reportedly profits as they do it.

Filed in Prince, copyrights, internet law, websites | Comments (0)