e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

April 2019
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 
       


The End Of The Absurdity: Iceland, The Country, Successfully Invalidates The Trademark Of Iceland Foods, The Grocerer

Furnished content.


Way back in late 2016, we asked the same question that has been on the minds of all of humanity for eons: who gets to trademark Iceland? If that seems like an odd question to you, perhaps a little context will help. See, Iceland has been a sovereign nation since the early 1900s, whereas Iceland Foods has been a grocery chain in the UK since the 1970s. And, yet, somehow the latter managed to get an EU-wide trademark for the term "Iceland" and then went around bullying companies from Iceland out of using that term in their own names, even when they weren't competing in the grocery marketplace. How did the EU manage to think it would be okay to grant this trademark in the first place, you ask? By not putting a whole lot of thought into it, would be my guess.Well, when Iceland, the country, applied for a trademark for "Inspired by Iceland", only to have it blocked by Iceland Foods, it apparently represented the last straw. Iceland petitioned the EU to invalidate this absurd trademark, leading to reps from Iceland Foods trekking to meet with the nation's officials. The outcome of that meeting was apparently Iceland Foods being totally confused as to why Iceland wasn't just being cool, maaaaan.Well, this story has finally reached its conclusion, and that conclusion is the EU reversing its original error and invalidating the trademark.

Now, years later, EUIPO has ruled in favour of Iceland – the country – and invalidated the supermarket’s trademark entirely, noting that “It has been adequately shown that consumers in EU countries know that Iceland is a country in Europe and also that the country has historical and economic ties to EU countries, in addition to geographic proximity.”Foreign Minister Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson said he welcomed the ruling, but was not surprised by it. “…[I]t defies common sense that a foreign company can stake a claim to the name of a sovereign nation as was done [in this case],” he remarked.
Well... yeah. That's right. The idea that the EU granted a trademark for the name of a nation within the European Economic Area is the kind of thing that proves it's impossible to write parody any longer. Sure, Iceland isn't officially in the EU, but trademark law has always cast narrow eyes at applications for terms that represent geography. None of this is new. Or difficult. Yet, for years Iceland Foods has been able to wield its absurd trademark against other businesses from Iceland, and against Iceland's government itself.Now, Iceland Foods has the option to appeal the ruling over the next couple of months. I can't imagine it will do so, though I wouldn't have guessed one could trademark "Iceland" to begin with, so...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 18-Apr-2019
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



John Oliver Has Famous Actors Act Out The Deposition Richard Sackler Is Trying To Hide

Furnished content.


One of the issues that we've discussed quite a bit on Techdirt over the years is the lengths that some people want to go to to hide court records and important public documents. The main story on this past weekend's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver tackled this issue in relation to Richard Sackler, the former chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, the company that developed and promoted Oxycontin. Much of the episode focused on questionable things said or done by Sackler, but towards the end, Oliver notes that Sackler has done an amazing job hiding from public scrutiny. There are very few pictures of him even online and no real videos they could find.

Most of the Sackler family has done its very best to avoid publicly talking about the marketing of Oxycontin, or the astounding mess it has created for the world (though, some members of the family have recently been complaining about guilt by association). However, a few years ago, in a lawsuit over the marketing of Oxycontin, Richard Sackler was forced to give a deposition in the case, which has been held under seal.Somehow, ProPublica was able to get its hands on the transcript of the deposition and published it back in February. Since then the family has been fighting against the release of the actual video recording of Sackler's deposition. There is tremendous public interest in this as Oliver explains in the video above, and ProPublica wrote about upon the release of the document:
As part of the settlement, the Kentucky attorney general agreed to destroy its copies of 17 million pages of documents produced during the eight-year legal battle with Purdue. But some of the same documents remained in a sealed file in a rural eastern Kentucky courthouse. STAT filed a motion in 2016 asking the judge in that case to make the documents public, and he ordered the unsealing of those documents, including the Sackler deposition.The court sees no higher value than the public (via the media) having access to these discovery materials so that the public can see the facts for themselves, Pike Circuit Court Judge Steven Combs ruled in May 2016.Purdue appealed the ruling to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which upheld it in December 2018. The company then asked the state Supreme Court to review that decision.
ProPublica also notes that this "is believed to be the only time a member of the Sackler family has been questioned under oath about the illegal marketing of OxyContin and what family members knew about it." That's why the transcript is so important.However, as Oliver notes, the Sacklers have continued to fight the release of the video and various other documents related to the case -- so to "help out," he brought together a group of talented actors to act out parts of the deposition and put them up on the website SacklerGallery.com -- a nod to the fact that the Sacklers have been getting lots of museums to name galleries and wings and other things after them. The actors include Bryan Cranston, Michael Keaton, Richard Kind, and Michael K. Williams. I'll leave it to John Oliver in the video above to explain why each of them are used, because it's truly wonderful.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 18-Apr-2019
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



April 2019
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 
       







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1000)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (115)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com