Flowbee is the latest company to file suit against Google for selling sponsored search ads to competitors under its trademarked keyword. The suit filed in federal district court in Corpus Christi, Texas argues that people are confused when they search for Flowbee and see a "sponsored" ads for competitors. "On information and belief," the company asserts in its complaint, "many consumers … [Read more...]

In its lawsuit filed against Advertise.com today in federal court, AOL demanded not only damages, but also for the court to order advertise.com, to change its company name and stop using the term advertise.com The suit asks the court to grant to AOL: """A.   Preliminarily and permanently enjoining and restraining Advertise.com, and all entities under its control, as well as its parents, … [Read more...]

Here's an interesting offline trademark battle between celebs over the word "nude". Seems that Designer Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul McCartney just announced that she will be releasing a new perfume StellaNude. Wife of Bono, leading singer of U2, Ali Hewson, and her business partner Bryan Meehan, have a company called Nude Skincare, which specializes in natural probiotic … [Read more...]

With all the talk about cash for clunkers program, Comcast just released a product that will give it "Cash For Typos." According to PcWorld.com, Comcast will direct all non resolving page requests that formerly went to a "sorry this page cannot be found" type page, to a Yahoo landing page. Comcast calls the Program "Domain Helper". We call it Cash For Typo's Domain Helper, the only … [Read more...]

If you've read this blog for a while, you know I've been telling readers that the English language is becoming trademarked, as most dictionary words and all common phrases are pretty much trademarked. The Boston Globe reported Saturday,  even Harvard University has gotten into the game and applied for U.S. trademarks on everyday phrases such as "Ask what you can do",   "Lessons learned",  "The … [Read more...]

The Las Vegas Sun, is reporting that Greg Ricks,  known to most in the domain community, filed a suit last week in U.S. District Court for Nevada against a company who sent him a C & D letter on the domain DateCheck.com DCAEV Inc., has a trademark on the term "Date Check" and owns "date-check.com". Date-check.com,  promotes incall and outcall escorts services around the country. Ricks … [Read more...]

Hotels.com lost its bid to register a trademark on “hotels.com” when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the mark was a "too generic term" to be trademarked. The decision handed down yesterday, upholds the ruling by the Trademark Appeal Board, of March 2008, which denied Hotels.com's application for a trademark,  also calling it too generic. The appeallate court in … [Read more...]