First off, it's worth pointing out, as people always do, that one of the oddities of trademark law is the idea that a trademark holder has to prevent others from using the mark without permission, or they run the risk of losing the mark. That leads to lots of nasty cease and desist letters from lawyers, and people defending them claiming they "have to" do this. But that is not so at all. First off, they only have to do that for cases where there is a likelihood of confusion, so they can certainly leave many other cases alone. But, more importantly, there's another option out there, which very few trademark holders embrace: they can just give a free license out.
The story about Twitter is really just that the company has filed for a trademark on TWEET, which is perfectly reasonable. Just because you're getting a trademark, it doesn't mean you're going to stop others from doing things (and, the TechCrunch post seems confused by a different trademark on Tweet -- but trademarks are specific to areas of use, so it's possible to have multiple trademarks on the same term in totally different areas of use). And, in fact, Twitter made a statement pointing out that it does, in fact, freely license its marks:
"We freely license "Tweet" for ecosystem partners who are using it correctly as part of accessing the Twitter API. That said, "Tweet" means something specific and we aim to protect that meaning. More on this can be found here: http://support.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/77641."
This seems like not just a perfectly reasonable trademark policy, but a smart one for encouraging others to help promote you and feel comfortable working with you as a partner. It's really surprising how quickly most other companies go for the legal nastygram, rather than "freely license" trademarks in cases where the use is clearly promoting the brand.
Did Activision Violate Arnold Schwarzenegger's Publicity Rights With Austrian Accented Thor? Ah, the fun never stops with the still ambiguous world of publicity rights, a relatively recent, but growing field of "intellectual property" that has all sorts of problems. THREsq points us to a legal analysis of whether or not California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a publicity rights claim over the character "Thor," found in Starcraft II. It's hard to argue that the character isn't based on Ahhh-nold, as it has his accent and repeats (sometimes paraphrased) famous Arnold lines from various movies:
In some ways, this is not all that different than the recent complaint from Michael Jackson's estate over the "zombie" Michael Jackson found in the game Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, to make this even more interesting, Schwarzenegger is still leading the legal fight against violent video games in California, so it seems even more amusing that his "voice" appears in a new video game.
That said, there's no indication that Schwarzenegger is actually upset by this -- and he apparently has not complained about other attempts to mimic his voice, such as with the Simpson's character McBane. So, at this point, the post above appears to be idle speculation on how a publicity rights claim might play out. However, it seems like a sad commentary on the state of publicity rights law that it's even worth considering whether such a creative choice by the gamemakers might break the law.
MLB Using Trademark To Decapitate Fan Promotion Of The Philly Phanatic On A Flugtag Major League Baseball is notorious for it's incredibly over aggressive enforcement of copyright and trademark laws, often well-beyond what is reasonable. Reader Mark alerts us to MLB's latest move, which is to demand that a flugtag team from Philadelphia remove the head of the Philly Fanatic that it put on their flugtag for one of Red Bull's regular Flugtag competitions. MLB's defense, I'm sure, is that it has to enforce the trademark and make sure no one else is using it without a license. But that's just silly. First of all, there's only a trademark offense when it's a use in commerce, and a silly competition based on trying to launch homemade, human-powered flying machines that cannot fly, is not quite a use in commerce. But, more to the point, these are fans of the team trying to promote the team and promote their fandom. And MLB is shutting them down. That's not particularly fan friendly. And so, instead of the Philly Phanatic on a Flugtag, it'll be decapitated by a silly trademark claim.
Psst - the SERO Premium Plans are now official The SERO Premium plans that have been getting lots of discussion in the comments section of a couple of related blog posts have now been officially announced by Sprint. You can see the announcement here and read the FAQs here (look on the right side of the page for a link to Frequently Asked [...]
Big Bell Dogma: August 2010 As we work to build mobility into every product, service, and process, our greatest inhibitor is the mindset represented by those who defend the tethering of products and processes to specific places. This mindset is fueled by the investments that have been made that establish power in the companies, departments, and individuals that stand in [...]
Recent Research: August 2010 Research is good. Free highlights from expensive research reports are great. Here are some recent headlines:
Mobile Broadband Market Worldwide to Reach 1 Billion Connections in 2012
Femtocell Revenue to Reach $4 Billion in 2014
More than 60% of Handsets Will Have Mobile Browsers in 2015
Mobile Video Market Set to Triple
Wi-Fi-Enabled Devices to Exceed 1.9 Billion Units by [...]
Observations: Devices - August 31, 2010 Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)
Report: Amazon, looking beyond Kindle, considers making phones
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales Grew 13.8% in Q2, But Competition Drove Prices Down
A Planet of Connected Devices
Smartphone [...]
Observations: Applications - August 25, 2010 Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)
GetJar tops 3 million application downloads per day
Evaluating App Store Opportunities
New apps make smartphones more valuable than stethoscopes to some docs
iPhone App Exchange: Where’s [...]
Observations: Services - August 24, 2010 Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)
For Google, the Cloud Is Its Mobile Future
News Corp. to unveil digital newspaper for mobile devices
Apple Shutting Down Quattro Wireless Ad Service
Hungry For Mobile [...]
Observations: Uncategorized - August 23, 2010 Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)
How e-Books Won the War
Global mobile data traffic nearly triples in 1 year
US Mobile Revenue to Overtake All Fixed-Line Services by 2015
Google’s Schmidt forecasts [...]
Enabling Technology: August 21, 2010 The Law of Mobility talks about value increasing with mobility. The impact of this law is being felt because the barriers to building mobility in are being obliterated week after week. Here are examples of technology advances enabling this to happen:
Paper thin speakers
128GB NAND flash
Flash 10.1
Augmented reality
Micronavigation
Bluetooth 4.0
3D Displays
jQuery
1.5GHz Snapdragon
Dual-Mode WiMAX/LTE Chip
64GB integrated SSD
Observations: Uses - August 16, 2010 Standard disclaimer: don’t take from my selections, ordering, headlines, etc. any indications of the interests or plans of my employer (if you do, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when they don’t play out.)
Massachusetts Transport Agency launches mobile parking payments
iPhone 4’s motion detectors open up a new class of medical apps for British doc
WellPoint, Aetna, Humana test [...]
Will Oracle Acquire RIM? Stephen Jannise of Distribution Software Advice has looked at Oracle’s history of acquisitions and reached the conclusion that RIM might be on their list of next targets. But he wants to know what you think, so he has posted his thinking along with a simple poll to collect the input of others.
Want to help [...]
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