Best Of The Trademark Bullies: Village Voice Sues Yelp Over 'Best Of' Lists
from the answer:-none dept
The latest in a long series of stupid trademark bullying lawsuits comes to us courtesy of The Village Voice (who should know better than to file bogus lawsuits). The Voice is suing Yelp for trademark infringement. The Village Voice somehow convinced the USPTO that it deserved a trademark on the phrase "best of [place name]" for certain locations -- such as "Best of Seattle" or "Best of San Francisco." Yelp, quite reasonably, also uses the term of "best of" to describe certain places:The EFF points out that the US Patent and Trademark Office is partly to blame for allowing registrations on such trademarks:
What is going on at the Patent and Trademark Office? For decades, folks have been complaining (with good reason) that the patent examiners need to do a better job of screening out bogus patent applications. It’s clear that the problem extends to the trademark side as well. The PTO has allowed companies and individuals to register marks in any number of obviously generic and/or descriptive terms, such as “urban homestead” (to refer to urban farms), “gaymer” (to refer to gay gamers), and “B-24” (to refer to model B-24 bombers).Separately, the EFF asks the most important question: who is actually being deceived here? There is no confusion. No one associates "best of" with the Village Voice. Everyone reads it as a perfectly normal descriptive term, rather than a trademark belonging to any single party.
Once a mark is registered, it is all too easy for the owner to become a trademark bully. And while companies like Yelp have the resources to fight back (as we expect it will), small companies and individuals may not. Just as dangerous, the trademark owner may go upstream, to intermediaries like Facebook who have little incentive to do anything other than take down an account or site that’s accused of infringement.
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Filed Under: best of, bullies, trademark, trademark bullies
Companies: village voice, yelp
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Now, whether this particular mark should have registereted is one thing, but calling out the PTO for registereing "descriptive terms" makes EFF look sort of foolish.
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Re:
Maybe I should go trademark all the adjectives in your comment and see what's left....
Also, I think you're confusing Trademark with copyright again. Trademarks are supposed to help customers not be confused about the product they are buying. Simply put by looking at a "Best of" list on Yelp is there any way I'm going to be confused about what it is or who is affiliated with the list? Is there anything that would lead me to believe Village Voice is involved? Is there anything that lower's the value of Village Voice's "Best of" lists?
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Speaking anectodally, meaning me, I sure the heck don't, and apparently neither do some of these commenters. So I'm with the EFF on this one.
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Best of
The Village Voice clearly does.
But this is true -- until I read this post, I would never have linked "best of" phrases with the Village Voice. You know what I do link such phrases with? Pretty much every small weekly in every town I have ever set foot in.
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Re: Best of
These Patents are so damn lame.Who the hell in their Right Mind allows Copyrights and Patents on English Language and Normal usage of Language.
Whoever issues these things should be thrown out of their job and investigated as well for Corruption.
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Re: Best of
• “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
• “When in the course of human events...”
• “Four score and seven years ago...”
• “It was the best of times...”
Someone care to rank these? Or maybe offer up another entrant?
(Note that I've excluded “Eh bien, mon prince...” on the grounds that it's in French—even in English language translation. If you've got another entry, then instantly-recognizable opening phrases only, please.)
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I'm looking forward to the epic trademark battle between the Dickens estate, the Village Voice, and the New York Times!
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re: Your Missive of 29 April
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Re: re: Your Missive of 29 April
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Lawyers need to be made to take risks.
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Re: Lawyers need to be made to take risks.
If Yelp used Village Voice's "Best Of" font, logo, and made it visually identical to what Village Voice had, I can see a case (though I still don't agree with it), but really, there is no confusion here. At all.
You are right that law-practice is almost risk free for prosecutors, which is why there are so many silly cases happening. I like the idea of juries deciding "irredeemably stupid prosecution." That idea is actually sort of brilliant.
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They already are beyond that point.
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
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... I oughta sue.
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More like the Village Idiot's Voice
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While we all lose on the trademark principles involved here, this couldn't be happening to two better organizations.
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