Harvard Bookstore Part Two
Via the Harvard Crimson, Harvard's
Berkman Center for Internet and Society responds to the Harvard Coop's
claim of intellectual property rights in its book pricing.
I do believe that's the most I've ever used "Harvard" in a single sentence.
Trademark Rights in Second Life Avatars
There is a post on
Valleywag today regarding the trademark rights in a Second Life avatar. The post makes some common errors when referring to trademarks. The errors are not simply semantic, but are important to truly grasp how trademarks work. The first sentence of the post reads:
Alyssa LaRoche has successfully obtained a trademark for her Second Life avatar Aimee Weber. Trademark rights come about through actual use of a mark, so rights are more accrued than obtained. A party can own a trademark registration but that by itself does not necessarily determine the strength of the mark, nor the ability of the owner of the registration to enjoin others from using a similar mark. If the post is referring to
this trademark application, it should be noted that the application has not yet matured into a registration. Moreover, the application is based on an intent to use the mark and no statement of use or allegation of use has been filed, although it does not necessarily follow that the mark is not yet in use.
The post concludes by calling Alyssa Roche, the owner of the mark,
foolish to think she really owns anything. She is seeking, in essence, a trademark on a figment of her imagination, in the service of a business of selling figments. It makes for good copy, but bad trademark analysis. Trademarks rights are always connected to the goods and services which the mark is used on or in connection with. Ms. Roche's trademark application sets forth the services as
Computer programming services, namely content creation for virtual worlds and three dimensional platforms. From a trademark law perspective, so long as Ms. Roche uses her mark/avatar in connection with the services she provides, there is nothing stopping her from accruing trademark rights. Ms. Roche is not selling
figments, she is selling very real programming services.
There are many fascinating intellectual property issues inside virtual worlds. This does not appear to be one of them.
Now That's a "Sucks.com" Site
If you were going to create a website devoted to informing the world about the problems you've had with a chain link fence purchased from Lowes,
you probably couldn't do a more thorough job than this man has. Photos, audio, scanned letters, some gentle taunting... it's got it all. Definitely one to watch.
Harvard Bookstore Apparently Claims Copyright in Prices
The Harvard Crimson reports that
university bookstore the Coop has taken to shooing out students who are caught writing down prices, presumably for the purpose of comparison shopping. The President of the Coop, Harvard grad Jerry Murphy, claims that the store considers the prices its intellectual property. I would assume that was an off the cuff remark by Mr. Murphy, and that he hasn't perused the "law" aisle of his bookstore in a while. Prices by themselves are generally not protected matter.
The Coop's informal policy is apparently in response to competition from
Crimson Reading, a student-run site that seeks to save students money on their books (and contributes profits to charity, mind you). We've seen this sort of
dubious invocation of intellectual property rights in prices before, as when Best Buy twice attempted to use the DMCA to keep various "Black Friday" websites from listing their day after Thanksgiving deals.
Social Networking roundup
The
Boston Globe covers a few Massachusetts-based companies --
Utterz and
MocoSpace -- in the mobile social networking space.
Slate delves into Club Penguin, and
sits down with a focus group of eleven year olds to discuss what other websites they're into these days.
New Copyright Office Records Search
The Copyright Office has rolled out its
new records search system. On first blush it's light years ahead of the clunky previous system, particularly in that the searchable fields are fairly extensive, and it allows for
Boolean searching. The
results page is far easier to comprehend as well. The downside is that no records prior to 1978 are available electronically, which seems odd as I'm fairly certain there were plenty of pre-1978 records available via the old search.
Overall, though, definitely a step up.
IP Considerations for Game Developers
Heads up to
all the game companies in the Boston area:
CNet summarizes a recent talk given by
Greg Boyd at the
Austin Game Developers Conference about the many intellectual property issues game developers should take into consideration before, during and after the development process.
Good v. Sucks
In one corner,
Life Is Good, a company built on the sartorial adventures of a smiley-faced doodle. In the other, "parody company"
Life Sucks, an undisguised stab at the overly-cheery original, run by 17 year old James Costantini and building itself on the sartorial misadventures of a frowny-faced doodle. The
Globe tells the tale.
New t-shirt idea: The expense of fighting a trademark infringement suit filed against me by a one hundred million dollar company sucks!
