Guy Sued Over Trademark On 'Fruit Of The Month Club' Turns Around And Sues Others Over 'Cheese Of The Month Club'
from the wrong-lesson-learned dept
Sometimes people who are sued over highly questionable copyright, patent or trademark laws turn into activists against the abuse of those laws (or against those laws altogether). At other times... the opposite occurs, and they realize that if others can abuse the law to their own benefit, they might as well too. Eric Goldman has the story of a guy, Anshu Pathak, who was sued a few years ago for offering a Fruit of the Month Club, which the company Harry & David claimed infringed on their own trademark. While Pathak fought this, now he's turned around and done pretty much the same thing, suing a bunch of companies, including Harry & David, over his own trademark on "Cheese of the Month Club." Apparently he more or less copied one of the earlier lawsuits. He includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in the lawsuit because of keyword ad sales on the term -- an argument that's unlikely to get very far.Of course, Goldman does a nice job of expressing (with only slightly uncharacteristic exasperation) how silly this whole thing is:
What a load of nonsense. The world would be a better place if we just declared the phrase "[food] of the month club" generic so that no one could claim a trademark in it. Even if the phrase once was descriptive and thus capable of secondary meaning, it has become genericized through overuse. In contrast, so long as we recognize trademark rights in watered-down descriptive terms like "[Food] of the month clubs," we get bogus disputes between companies with crummy trademarks, all of them tearing each other down rather than actually doing a better job for their customers. What a shame.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: anshu pathak, cheese of the month club, fruit of the month club, of the month, trademark
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Announcing...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Sounds to me like he's doing the exact opposite of dealing with reality. Seems like he's a little delusional to my untrained eye.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Abuse
In this simile, the guy was abused, so now feels the need to go about abusing others?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eureka!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I see his
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
*crickets*
Well, screw you then!
*doorslam*
*muffled sobbing*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Descriptive terms should never be eligible for trademark protection, secondary meaning or not. If something describes an item or service in such a way that a person seeing it would understand what it's referring to even if the brand did not exist, it shouldn't be subject to trademark protection.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I think that there is a problem with the whole trademark system when this can even be litigated.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
He's also a convicted felon.
Riverside County Superior Court, Case # RIF131496
Anshu Pathak was convicted of a felony, inflicting serious corporal injury on a child, with enhancements for using a deadly weapon in the commission of the felony. Pathak served one year in jail, commencing 12/07/07, and is on formal probation until 12/12/2012
[ link to this | view in chronology ]