This article is on another court case over trademark infringement. It fits right in with all the court cases we've been studying in class. The plaintiff in this court case is 1-800-Contacts Inc. who is a Utah-based online retailer of contact lenses. They are suing their competitor Drugstore.com Inc for putting Internet ads so they appear when customers search for 1-800-Contacts. They say that it is infringing on their trademarked name. These ads were supposed to stop after another lawsuit was filled from the same company back in 2003. Drugstore.com is an online retailed of health and pharmacy products. 1-800-Contacts also has filled a similar suit against competitor Lens.com back in August. The program Google's AdWords has caused many lawsuits for that fact that it allows companies to display ads next to search results for competitors. This article shows how new technology is making it easier for people to disregard trademarks and with something as big as the Internet it make it even harder to keep track of.
NY's Naked Cowboy Sues Over TrademarkThis article is dealing with how anyone can get trademarks and how big companies are going to have to be more careful in dealing with the "little guy" and how people are going to take the rights they have and use them. This article is about how the New York street performer "The Naked Cowboy" is suing Mars Inc. for $6 million over the use of his trademark looks which consists of white underwear, cowboy boots, and a hat because of a billboard sign in Times Square that sports a blue M and M dressed the same way. Burck filled a suit claiming that these sign used his look to promote M and Ms without compensating him. He is suing both Mars Inc. and Chute Gerdeman Inc., the company responsible for the ad, for trademark infringement. He says the comparisons are too similar for their to be a leeway. He said that Mars and Chute Gerdeman are exploiting and trading upon is recognized likeness with our furnishing compensation. Bruck has trademarked his looks and has made a lot of other TV and movie appearances.
The Suicide Kings get name backAs we've learned even trademarks have time limits and this article deal with just that. A longtime country group called the Revenants got a cease and desist letter from a man called "Satan" who said that he owned the trademark to that name. The band decided that they would try to go back to using their old name, The Suicide Kings, which they had abandoned before because another band from California had decided to sue everyone that was using that name. They decided just to drop it and find a different name, but when they got this letter from "Satan" saying that he had registered the name "The Revenants," one of the band members decided to look into "The Suicide Kings." He found that the people who had originally owned the trademark name had let the time run out on it and now it was up for grabs again. So they took it, but are still getting hassled from a clothing company this time. This just goes to show how we've become much more quick to make sure that no one violates our property. Its become more about ownership and money than anything else.