Alt Legal IP News – Issue #89
Hannah Samendinger | May 22, 2018
Familiar Snacks
– Does this ketchup bottle remind you of something?
– Ritz is suing a Chinese company who produces a lookalike product for trademark infringement and MillerCoors is suing a Korean beer company over similarities to their Miller Lite branding.
– Inspired by INTA 2018, this is a great read on what it takes to protect the Starbucks brand.
Curse Words, Jokes, and Sex Toys
– The newest Deadpool movie cracks jokes at the expense of most of the intellectual property in the DC and Marvel universes.
– The MTA is reviewing Cynthia Nixon’s new subway t-shirts for potential trademark misuse.
– Toys-R-Us is auctioning off their intellectual property as they liquidate the company. Some interesting domain names like sex-toys-r-us.com are up for grabs.
Wrapping Up
– Brandless, a company with minimal branding, was denied trademark protection for their packaging design.
– The TTAB shut down the NJ Turnpike Authority’s opposition to a pizza restaurant’s logo.
– After an outpouring of support for a local barber, a national chain walked back their request that he change his business’ name.
-Match is settling their Tinder dispute with Tantan.
Odds and Ends
– Is Amazon complicit in the widespread counterfeiting on their site?
– Play-Doh received a trademark registration for the scent of Play-Doh, which they describe as a “sweet, slightly musky, vanilla fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, combined with the smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.”
– The EFF created a science fiction story about a fair use petition to the Copyright Office.
– A German court ruled that a TV show cannot use “bloopers” from another network without permission.
– The creator of a Star Trek and Dr. Seuss mashup beat trademark claims largely due to a judge’s mashup of a 1986 Federico Fellini film and the Fox hip-hop drama Empire.