Disney uses "dadt" as a domain name, unaware of its "political" meaning

Yesterday, while looking up the “Live with Kelly” show (ABC) online, I found that it was on a domain belonging to Disney, dadt.com.   Specifically, the link was this  (the page actually gives a javascript error in Chrome sometimes). I found that dadt without a directory doesn’t resolve and that it does not have a USPTO live trademark. Domaintools (WHOIS) does show the name was registered by Disney in 2000. The acronym seems to stand for “Disney American Domestic Television”.   Apparently the company was not aware that DADT was the abbreviation for the notorious “don’t ask don’t tell” policy for gays in the military.

I’ve discussed my own doaskdotell.com domain most recently on Feb. 4, 2010 here.

Picture: An SLDN rally from about 2007. 

Kellogg's uses same brand for more than one cereal -- look at your Special K

Did I see this right?  Kellogg’s Special K has two different cereals, the “original” is much more bubbly, almost like the original Rice Krispies of the Howdy Doody show of the 50s.  

That’s what I noticed this morning.

If a company uses the same mark for two different products, doesn’t it “dilute” its own mark?  Yes, it has a right to, but ….

One of the worst cereal TV ads in the 50s was for something called “Alphabits”, a sugar-coated, pastel-colored cereal whose advertising was based on showing little kids misspelling words, exploiting the viewer’s “nicer weakness”.

Yes, some uses of trademark are “legal” but culturally offensive.

Do airports trademark their destinate codes?

On a day that the Los Angeles International Airport lost power suddenly during violent Santa Ana winds, I noticed that the airport doesn’t own its own acronym as a domain. LAX belongs to the Lacrosse Superstore;  the airport is Laxa.

I suppose most airports would claim trademarks on the standard identification codes (DCA for Reagan, DFW for Dallas-Fort Worth, IAD for Dulles, BWI for Baltimore).  But would that guarantee them domain names?

Today I accidentally typed googla instead of google and got a warning from Webroot.  It seems to me that it shouldn’t be such a big deal to get fake sites shut down under a SOPA worded narrowly and properly.

Wikipedia attribution link, Santa Ana winds.

P.S.: later reports say that the strongest winds were around Mammoth Lake CA. I've driven US 395, the Owens Valley road, many times.  It's scary. 

Would SOPA be effective against "parasite" domains (based on misspellings or different tld's)?

There’s a bill in Congress, called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House and Protect-IP in the Senate, discussed on the “BillBoushka” blog particularly on Oct. 27.

Yesterday, I ran into another “social survey” when I tried to access “khanacademy.org” and misstyped it as “kahnacademy”.  It’s a very natural error.  It strikes me that the owners of legitimate sites (Khan Academy is well known for online tutorials in many subjects) would want to pursue trademark dilution claims against deliberate imitators. Perhaps SOPA makes it easier for them to shut down clones, either for parked domains (as in the past) or to send spam or malware.

The problem will be due process – whether there are areas of gray where sites that are actually legitimate could get caught in the middle.

In the meantime, larger sites ought to reserve (as equivalent domains) plausible misspellings of their domain names.  I don’t know why neither Webroot nor MyWOT caught this misspelling as an obvious “parasite”.

You can check the original and parasite names on “domain tools” (WHOIS) and see different registrants.  That could help provide some “evidence” for “due process” in a takedown.

I do see a “doaskdotell.org” (mine is doaskdotell.com) at Godaddy, and I don’t recommend going to the .org, don’t know what you might get.   (Something else I noticed: MyWOT doesn’t like “Keywordspy” which looks up domain names.)

"Occupy" could become a trademark associated with the new protest movement; more on my "do ask do tell"

Protester-entrepreneur (an oxymoron?) Robert Maresca (with spouse) wants to trademark the various “Occupy” movement names (“Occupy Wall Street”, “Occupy D.C.”, etc.). The trademarks would apply to various promotional items like T-shirts and silk screens.  The news story is here.  CNN has a similar story by Kristina Sgeuglia, mentioned yesterday during the morning on the network, here.

Maresca says he will turn over all money made from selling items to fund the Occupy movement.

It’s perfectly legitimate for “non-profits” to own trademarks.  (Consider “Blue Cross, Blue Shield”).   The important concept is that the entity uses the mark in commerce (even for non-profit purposes), such as goods or services.

 

As a phrase that identifies a political protest movement of concept, “Occupy Wall Street” is not trademarkable.  But if it sells goods to help its cause, it can set up a brand name for the goods, which could well be “Occupy”.  There is some legitimate question as to whether common English words should be monopolized as trademarks (or wordmarks).  But typically a trademark is supposed to apply to only one line of business at a time.

Once registered, Maresca or any similar holder of a trademark for “Occupy” could file against other entities for prospective dilution, according to the 2006 law.

There could be questions as to how “commercial” a usage really is.  If a proposed trademark holder can process his or her own orders and credit card operations (under stricter security guidelines) on its own server, rather than outsourcing to Amazon, for example, does it have a stronger claim? (either with the USPTO or later in court).  I wonder.  The ability to do so could be evidence of economic scale commensurate with a trademark claim.

The main entities that could be affected could be domain name holders who don’t claim trademarks, for other purposes than commercial (political speech).  But ICANN generally supports domain name holders who registered in “good faith”, commercial or not.

As for me: I’ve used “do ask dot tell” for the title of two (now three) of my books since 1997, and as a domain name since 1999.  To date, USPTO shows only one attempt to trademark the phrase, serial 74700025, dead, abandoned June 13, 1996, originally filed by Robert J. Powers (author of two books “A Manager’s Guide” and “A Family and Friend’s Guide” to sexual orientation, in the mid 1990s). The marks would have been used for “buttons, paper weights, stickers, writing instruments, notepads, banners, promotional materials for books and workshops”.

I have thought about the possible use of “Do Ask Do Tell” as a movie distribution company for independent film, especially films have to do with LGBT issues, most notably the historic fight over the military gay ban, or “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, and concentric issues. I have had at least one brief business discussion on the idea (yesterday).

Taylor Swift threatens "trademark" lawsuit against Celeb Jihad

Singer Taylor Swift is threatening a trademark infringement lawsuit against a website “Celebrity jihad” for presenting (nude) pictures that it claims are of her but are not.  How is this a “trademark” issue?

The story broke on CNN Monday morning.  Here’s a story from International Business Times, link. 

“Celeb Jihad” has its own account here. Note: the site is very slow this morning.

My favoite song of Swift is "Mine", on YouTube here.  In January, it was the most common song on Sirius XM on a car business trip to Charlotte. 

"Life Is Good" is a trademarked name

While driving in Arlington yesterday, I was behind a pickup truck with a “Life Is Good” image (embedded on a picture of a tire) on the back bumper, and I could even see the trademark “r”.  I thought it was interesting that a phrase of such common words could be trademarked, so I looked it up, here. It is both charitable and commercial.

I looked it up at USPTO and found it pretty recent (2011), with a description “Entertainment in the nature of festivals featuring live musical performances, games, speeches and food”.

The phrase for my own domain “Do Ask Do Tell” still has only the one abandoned attempt from 1995.