By Eric Goldman The Utah legislature is continuing its embarrassing third attempt to regulate keyword advertising. Today, after making a ticky-tack amendment, the Utah House passed HB 450 and sent the bill to the Senate. However, the House was sharply divided, voting 38-36-1 to pass it. The law bare...

By Eric Goldman When I first heard that the Utah legislature is considering yet another law to regulate keyword advertising, I thought: Are you kidding me? After all, Utah has pursued these regulations twice with disastrous results. The first time, in 2004, Utah's attempt to regulate adware-mediated...

Psion, the wee company that decided no one should say netbook so it could pursue the spoils of trademark battles, just got a kick in the balls from Dell. Dell has filed a cancellation request with......

Tensions have exploded between Air-O-Matic, Inc. and InfoMedia, Inc., two of the hottest names in iPhone flatulence. Air-O-Matic, maker of "Pull My Finger," has complained to Apple, threatened to sue its competitor over "iFart Mobile," and demanded monetary compensation, so InfoMedia is responding v...

Ask a patent attorney whether you need a patent and he or she will likely stare at you like you just asked them if they need a new Jet Ski. Despite possessing a wealth of knowledge about what patents are and what they do, most patent attorneys simply do not have enough information to determine if a ...

Filed under: Driving, Rhythm, Business Depending on what half of the information we're about to report appeals to you, be prepared to launch your trance vibrators or cans of Skoal high into the air in a fit of glee. Sega recently saved two franchises from the trademark trash compactor, effectively r...

I spent most of the NYC ComicCon lurching in circles with my mouth half-open, hunting for a copy of Detective Comics # 587 and spending way too much money on plastic bullshit that reminds me of my childhood. The experience was spectacular. I haven’t been to a comic book convention since 1991, ...

jkOnTheRun reports on how Google is now honoring Psion’s trademark of Netbook effectively killing the search term for anyone else.  If this pushes further we are likely to see devices currently called netbooks go through a rebranding. What’s strange about this is that Psion has effectiv...

Bart Lieben is an intellectual property attorney who has become the go-to guy for trademark verification for top-level domain Sunrise periods. In my interview with Bart, he talks about how he does his job, with some tantalizing hints about a system he’s developing to make the whole trademark v...

Advertisers don't dare use the term 'Super Bowl' in their ads. The NFL goes to great lengths (read: employs a shitload of lawyers) to protect the 'Super Bowl' brand name. I have to admit, though, advertisers aren't trying very hard to come up with original ways to avoid using...