The Wet nightclub, a popular Chicago bar, was ordered to pay over $500,000 in damages after people working undercover for Red Bull ordered drinks that mixed Red Bull with vodka but were served another energy drink.  The act of serving a less expensive energy drink and telling customers it was Red Bull undoubtedly caused damages to Red Bull.  Whenever any product is being passed off as another product there are liability concerns, but this is particularly true where the product that is being passed off is also an inferior product.  So not only is Red Bull’s name being used to make money for someone other than themselves, but because the resulting inferior drink is associated with the Red Bull name the brand suffers through no fault of their own.

On Friday, April 25, 2008, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released its annual “Special 301″ Report on the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection by U.S. trading partners.

This year’s Special 301 Report places forty-six (46) countries on the Priority Watch List, Watch List, or the Section 306 monitoring list.  There are nine (9) countries on this year’s Priority Watch List: China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand, and Venezuela. Countries on the Priority Watch List do not provide an adequate level of IPR protection or enforcement, or market access for persons relying on intellectual property protection, in absolute terms and/or relative to a range of factors such as their level of development. Priority Watch List countries will be the subject of particularly intense engagement through bilateral discussion during the coming year.

Several news outlets are reporting that Dick’s Sporting Goods has acquired the Maxfli brand from Adidas’ TaylorMade golf unit.  In at least one particular news report from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review it was reported that Dick’s Sporting Goods purchased the trademark.  While this is likely descriptive enough for everyone to know what happened, I figured I would take this opportunity to explain that trademarks cannot be sold. 

As I sit here eating my Burger King French Fries and McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger, (ketchup only, of course), I can’t help but think of a recent conversation I had with my very innovative 11 year old son Joey.   We had just left the doctor’s office and were a bit pressed for time, so we decided to stop at Burger King for lunch on the way to our next destination.  I ordered the BK Whopper Jr. with Fries and a Soda and Joey chose the Chicken Fries with Fries and a Soda as well.

While enjoying my BK fries and not so much enjoying my Whopper Jr. I said to my son “McDonald’s Burgers are so much better than Burger King’s, but Burger King makes the best fries!”  I recall as early back as my first year in college, driving through the McDonald’s drive through for my Quarter Pounder with cheese and you guessed it, ketchup only.  And then I’d drive up the street to the Burger King and order my fries. I have always felt this way and I am sure there are many others that feel the same.  But I digress.

After my comment, Joey looked at me and nonchalant as could be he said, “Too bad you can’t have a company that sells both.  Maybe we should start our own company!”  My son is always “inventing” things, from fast cars of the future to children’s games.  I’ve got hundreds of his “patent drawings.”  My response to Joey, which I said with a sly chuckle was, “Well if we did start a company like that, then we’d have to steal the recipes.”  And so the wheels in my mind started to turn.

By now it would seem that virtually everyone knows of the enormous upset pulled off by the New York Giants against the New England Patriots (17-14) in the Super Bowl on Sunday.  As soon as I saw Bill Belichick, the Coach for the New England Patriots, who I have taken to calling Belicheat, I knew the Patriots were in trouble.  He always wears a gray hoody, but for some reason he decided to tempt fate and wear a red one for the biggest game of the year, and what could have been the biggest game of his life.  You see, the New England Patriots were trying to become only the second team to ever complete an NFL season undefeated and with a championship.  Athletes can be very superstitious, so this seemed a particularly odd thing to do.

In any event, not only did the Patriots lose, but believe it or not, more than two weeks before Super Bowl XLII the New England Patriots filed a United States Trademark Application on both “19-0″ and “19-0 The Perfect Season.”  Not to be deterred though, and just a little bit insulted that the Patriots would be so overly confident, the New York Post filed their own trademark application on “18-1.” 

This is something that I have been wanting to write for some time now and this past weekend, while I was watching football, I was reminded again by the ever present Subway commercials that their sandwiches are not at all what they seem to be, at least to me and my family.  Pictured here is a sub as it is shown on the Subway website.  This sandwich is not at all unlike the sandwiches that are shown in the Subway commercials.  If you are a football fan I am sure that you have see these ads, typically proclaiming that Subway subs have “more meat.”  Even if you are not a football fan I suspect that you have seen these commercials at one point in time or another.  Jared, the guy who lost hundreds of pounds eating only Subway subs, has become something of a fixture on our TVs.

On December 21, 2007, Chuck Norris sued Penguin Group in the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York over a book they published in November 2007 titled The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World’s Greatest Human.  Norris is also suing author Ian Spector who runs several websites that promote the book.  The basis for the book and the websites are mythical rumors that have been circulating around the Interent since at least 2005, one of them being that Norris’ tears cure cancer.

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