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Archive for the ‘Intellectual Property’ Category

“F**k Michael Powell,” said a Home Depot executive about the inventor of a new saw safety device, “Let him sue us.” And that is just what inventor and holder Michael Powell did. MORE

With apologies to the Coen brothers, Columbia Pictures is learning the hard way not to f— with the Jesus.

A lawyer for Brazil’s Catholic Church has gone public with a dispute over the destruction of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue in November’s global hit “2012.” Seems the church didn’t enjoy the scene as much as we did, prompting archdiocese attorney Claudine Dutra to tell the AFP that Columbia didn’t get a proper copyright license to depict the country’s most famous statue.  MORE

Hulu announced yesterday that Comedy Central was pulling “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” from the popular video website. The decision will impact the many downstream websites that have relied on Hulu’s embedded player to gain access to these shows.

“Yes, we intend to do so,” says… MORE

The good people at Xerox don’t want trademark genericide to happen to their copiers, so for years they’ve waged a campaign to remind people that Xerox is a brand, not a synonym for a photocopy. And they’re enlisting Hollywood in that fight.  MORE

Suits over the use of trademarks in Google ads appeared to have the glimmer of a new gold mine for plaintiffs lawyers, but the luster may be fading.

A favorable ruling for Rescuecom Corp. in April in a long-running case against Google Inc. has fueled more suits, including would-be class actions, against the search giant for selling trademarked keywords that trigger ads alongside its search results.

But in the last two weeks, two AdWords lawsuits — from Daniel Jurin and Ascentive LLC — have folded. It highlights the difficulties of the suits, experts say: It’s a hard case to make and it’s expensive to litigate against Google.  More