On June 29, the California Court of Appeal reversed the judgment for Russell Christoff in his lawsuit against Nestle’s. As I’ve written about before, Christoff, a former model, happened to be in a store one day in 2002 and saw…
Uri Geller’s also trying to bend the law with this one.
Last fall I reported on a campaign by Andy Griffith to become the new sheriff of Grant County, Wisconsin. Griffith had formerly been William Harold Fenrick, but changed his name to Andrew (Jackson) Griffith so that he could run for…
Having just lost in his fourth attempt to become Governor of Tokyo, famous inventor Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu was undaunted and said he would run up to 16 more times if necessary. He also said he did not believe age would…
Earlier this week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office informed Alexandre Batlle that it would not register the proposed trademark "OBAMA BIN LADEN," which of course conflates the names of presidential candidate "Barack Obama" and non-presidential-candidate "Osama bin Laden." Batlle…
On October 20th, Saints quarterback Drew Brees (or his agents, anyway) sent his mom a letter demanding that she cease and desist using his name and likeness in a TV commercial. Mina Brees is running for a spot on the…
Yesterday I argued an appeal in California’s Court of Appeal for the Second District, which covers Los Angeles, and I was just getting ready to leave after the argument when they called the next case, Christoff v. Nestle USA. That…
Happy the Clown and other Bay Area clowns received threatening letters last week from Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams and Sheppard LLP, a New York firm, telling the clowns to cease and desist from wearing costumes that look too much like characters…
The Hershey Co., which makes the well-known and much-beloved “Milk Duds” candy, has filed a complaint with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office against a California company that Hershey alleges makes a product with a confusingly similar name. The product,…