Monster Energy Loses Appeal On Monsta Pizza Trademark Ruling

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Monster Energy, maker of caffeinated liquid crank, has a long and legendary history of being roughly the most obnoxious trademark bully on the planet. It faces stiff competition in this arena of bad, of course, but it has always put up quite a fight to win that title. The company either sues or attempts to block trademarks for everything that could even possibly be barely linked to the term "monster" in any way. One such case was its opposition to a trademark registration for Monsta Pizza in the UK. Pizza is, of course, not a beverage, but that didn't stop Monster Energy from trying to keep the pizza chain from its name. It lost that opposition, with the IPO pointing out that its citizens are not stupid enough to be confused between drinks and pizza.And that should have been the end of the story, except that this is Monster Energy we're talking about, so of course it appealed its loss. Its grounds for appeal amounted to "Nuh-uh! The public really might be confused!" Thankfully, Monster Energy lost this appeal as well.

However, the bid was rejected "in its entirety" at the Court of Appeal.Chris Dominey, who founded travelling pizzeria Monsta with Christopher Lapham in 2017, said he had been "immensely relieved" to reach the end of the battle but the business remained in debt due to legal fees which could not be recouped.He said: "It feels great, I have got my business back, and it does feel good to beat a 'big bully' so to speak. If you are confident that you are right you should go for it, but but I would tell other small businesses to beware that it does cost a lot of money."

The business uses a monster-shaped pizza oven, which its logo is designed to represent, meaning a name change would have required considerable upheaval. Mr Dominey thanked people who contributed to a crowdfunding campaign which helped pay for some of the legal costs, and those who "gave us support and told us to keep fighting".

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Report Shows ICE Almost Never Punishes Contractors Housing Detainees No Matter How Many Violations They Rack Up

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ICE continues to make its own case for abolishment. The agency busies itself with neglecting detainees when not acting as the extension of major corporations to shut down infringing panties/websites. ICE is too big and it's getting bigger at a rate it can't sustain. To achieve the ends the President has set down for it, it's wearing itself thin trying to find the dangerous immigrants Trump keeps talking about or the bound-and-gagged women he insists are being brought across the border by the truckload.It seemingly doesn't have the manpower to even capture just dangerous foreigners. Instead of using its resources more carefully, it's doing things like setting up fake colleges to capture dangerous criminals immigrants seeking educational opportunities. And it's continuing to outsource its responsibilities while taking an apparent hands-off approach to third party detention.ICE's Inspector General released a report last summer stating the agency was failing to inspect detention facilities often enough or well enough. It found contractors performing government work were doing the job poorly. Detainees weren't being interviewed properly or given translators to overcome speech barriers. In some cases, detention personnel were not giving detainees access to services like phone calls to the ICE officers handling their cases. In some facilities, dangerous detainees were intermingled with non-criminals. In almost every case, ICE issued a waiver for deficiencies it actually observed. As far as the OIG could tell, dozens of deficiencies went unnoticed thanks to ICE's inability (or unwillingness) to perform mandatory inspections.There's more bad news coming from the OIG's office about ICE's use of contractors to handle detainees. The latest report [PDF] delves into ICE's apparent unwillingness to hold anyone accountable. ICE can't be trusted to police itself, so it obviously can't be trusted to police its contractors.This is the Inspector General's ultra-dry summary of the problems it discovered:

ICE does not adequately hold detention facility contractors accountable for not meeting performance standards. ICE fails to consistently include its quality assurance surveillance plan (QASP) in facility contracts. The QASP provides tools for ensuring facilities meet performance standards. Only 28 out of 106 contracts we reviewed contained the QASP.

Between October 1, 2015, and June 30, 2018, ICE imposed financial penalties on only two occasions, despite documenting thousands of instances of the facilities’ failures to comply with detention standards. Instead of holding facilities accountable through financial penalties, ICE issued waivers to facilities with deficient conditions, seeking to exempt them from having to comply with certain detention standards. However, ICE has no formal policies and procedures about the waiver process and has allowed officials without clear authority to grant waivers. ICE also does not ensure key stakeholders have access to approved waivers.

Our review of the corresponding payment data identified about $3.9 million in deductions, representing only 0.13 percent of the more than $3 billion in total payments to contractors during the same timeframe. ICE did not impose any withholdings during this timeframe.

We analyzed the 68 waiver requests submitted between September 2016 and July 2018. Custody Management approved 96 percent of these requests, including waivers of safety and security standards.Despite this high approval rate, ICE could not provide us with any guidance on the waiver process. Key officials admitted there are no policies, procedures, guidance documents, or instructions to explain how to review waiver requests. The only pertinent documents that ICE provided were examples of memoranda that Field Office Directors could use to request waivers of the detention standards’ provisions on strip searches. However, the memoranda did not acknowledge the important constitutional and policy interests implicated by a facility’s use of strip searches. ICE officials did not explain how Custody Management should handle such waiver requests when a contrary contractual provision requires compliance with a strip search standard.

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