Is There Any Form Of Corruption Senator Burr Didn't Engage In?
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Senator Richard Burr, the head of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee sure seems to be engaged in a bunch of sketchy looking activities. First, there was the revelation from a few weeks back of selling off a bunch of hotel stock after being briefed about COVID-19 (while simultaneously telling the public it was nothing to worry about -- and that the US was "in a better position than any other country to respond," which now looks laughable in retrospect). The latest, as revealed by ProPublica, is that Burr sold his DC townhouse to a lobbyist who has had issues before Barr's committees, in a "private" unlisted sale for what appears to be above market rates.Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price $900,000 to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property's value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.Green is a longtime donor to Burr's political campaigns and has co-hosted at least one fundraiser for him. In 2017, the year of the sale, Green lobbied on behalf of a stream of clients with business before Burr's committees. As with many of these things, whether or not this is legal depends on a lot of the specifics (including if this really was sold above market rate). But even if was legal, it certainly has all the appearance of fairly blatant corruption.This has every appearance of being a violation of the gift ban, said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen. The gift ban is one of the most basic legal frameworks for preventing corruption. Lobbyist gifts to lawmakers is akin to a bribe. Burr, for his part insists that the sale was for fair market value, despite what others are saying.Tax assessors valued the Washington, D.C., home for $796,720 in 2017, more than $100,000 less than Green and his business partner paid for it. But tax assessment values in the city often come in under market prices. Burr paid $525,000 for the place in 2003.Redfin, the real estate website, estimated the home's value to be $813,973 in the month the house was sold, though the company's valuations are far from exact.Bob Williams, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent who helps buy and sell homes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, reviewed the listing for ProPublica and said that he would estimate that in early 2017 Burr's home would have sold on the market for around $850,000, possibly more if there were multiple competing offers. Given that, it certainly doesn't appear to be an egregious overreach, but still one that certainly leads to significant skepticism about Burr's ethics. One thing about being a public official is that you're supposed to go out of your way to avoid situations that would make the public doubt your commitment to the public interest. Instead, Burr and some others in the article are going by the legalistic "well, the Senate Ethics Committee was notified and we followed their rules" which is a legalistic way of saying "my colleagues looked the other way for me."
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Apr-2020
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JaM Cellars Sues Franzia For Trademark Over 'Jammy', An Incredibly Common And Descriptive Term In Wines
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The alcohol trademark wars continue! Now, usually when we talk about trademark disputes in the booze business, those disputes tend to center around creative names and trade dress of specific craft brands. This is most common in the craft beer arena, but it also happens in wine and liquor. While the sudden turn towards corporatism in the craft alcohol industries is more than mildly annoying, it is at least understandable when there is a trademark fight over the more unique aspects of branding.Much more annoying is when trademark disputes arise from one party trying to fight over the more generic terms in the alcohol industry. An example of this comes to us from JaM Cellars, the makers of the JaM brand of wine. Full disclosure: I've consumed roughly a metric ton of JaM wine in my time and really, really love it. What I love less, though, is that JaM decided to sue The Wine Group, makers of Franzia boxed wine, over its newly branded "Bold and Jammy" brand of boxed red wine.On April 1, 2020, JaM Cellars filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against The Wine Group, makers of the popular Franzia brand boxed wine. Plaintiff JaM Cellars is the owner of trademarks relating to the word JAM used in wine products (U.S. Trademark Registration Nos. 3,787,229 and 3,855,785). According to the complaint, since being introduced in 2009, wine using the JAM marks has received several awards, and JaM Cellars has expended millions of dollars in advertising the wine using the JAM marks.JaM Cellars filed the complaint in the U.S. Federal Court in the Northern District of California. In addition to allegations of trademark infringement, the complaint also includes unfair competition claims under federal and state law. The full complaint is embedded below, but a couple of items worth highlighting. First, this is not the first such case between these two entities. JaM also has a "Butter" branded wine and sued The Wine Group over its "Butterkissed" wines, as well as a more recent and pending suit over The Wine Group's "Rich and Buttery" branded Franzia wines. What should immediately strike most everyone, and especially those of you who, like me, consider yourself amateur sommeliers, is that all of these terms are incredibly common in the wine industry. Why the Trademark Office approved these marks is a totally valid question, but it doesn't seem as though JaM Cellars should be able to wield the USPTO's ignorance as a way to keep descriptive terms out of the brands of its competition.And yet that is exactly what it's trying to do. Explicitly, even, right in the pages of the complaint.Plaintiff's JAM Marks for wine are not descriptive when used in association with wine and therefore are inherently distinctive. The inherent distinctiveness of Plaintiff's JAM Mark is presumed and incontestable given its ownership of the incontestable federal trademark registrations. That's some 91 pt. sophistry right there. The argument is essentially that it cannot be argued that the terms in question on either side of this trademark lawsuit could be considered descriptive because the Trademark Office approved the trademark JaM is using to file the lawsuit. As though the USPTO has never approved a descriptive trademark in error, or made any error of any kind, apparently. One hopes the courts or defendants smack that particular passage around in open session.Beyond that, this all comes down to customer confusion. JaM Cellars spends far less time in its complaint on anything to do with customer confusion and instead focuses on how The Wine Group branded its Bold and Jammy boxed wine differently than its other brands. The image below is directly from the complaint.Is the branding different? Well, sure! One might call the branding for Bold and Jammy more...bold and jammy? But you might also notice that the same Franzia branding across the top is in place. And then, compare that to the branding on the JaM wine, which looks very, very different (again, straight from the lawsuit):I feel quite confident that the average consumer walking up and seeing these two products side by side (which they aren't in stores) would not be confused into thinking they were related. I'm all the more confident that the average wine drinker isn't going to have that confusion given the stature of each brand among wine drinkers.In the end, all of this is a stupid fight over incredibly common terms in the wine industry. While The Wine Group has a history of settling with JaM Cellars out of court, this is a fight I hope they see to the end.
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Apr-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
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