e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

July 2020
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
     
 


Stone Brewing, One-Time Battlers Of 'Big Beer', Out Here Trying To Cancel Non-Confusing Trademarks

Furnished content.


In the past few years, as the craft brewing industry exploded, it became something of a regular thing for us to write about one craft beer trademark dispute or another. The idea is that as the industry has grown, it's become corporatized. The once congenial atmosphere of the industry, one which saw breweries heavily borrow from one another, or skirt the line of potential confusion, devolved into suited lawyers arguing about beer brands. And if that doesn't make you sad, you simply have no soul.Stone Brewing was once one of the smaller craft breweries out there and built a reputation for itself for taking on "big beer." That stance morphed in 2018 into a lawsuit against MillerCoors over the latter's rebranding of Keystone beer into "Stone" on its can labels.

In March 2020, a federal court rejected both sides’ motions for summary judgment and the case will now move to trial in October 2020. Stone Brewing is seeking to recover $1 billion in damages in regard to infringing sales. Coincidentally, in the lawsuit, MillerCoors argues that the San Diego-based craft brewery’s trademark of the word “stone” f is “conceptually weak because at least 10 other craft breweries actively use the word ‘Stone’ in their name."
And that pushback from MillerCoors appears to have been the catalyst for Stone morphing, just like its industry has, into one of corporate lawyering and aggressive trademark enforcement. Since March, it appears that Stone has gone hunting for other breweries that have been using the word "stone" in their names and, in several cases, is attempting to have that trademark cancelled.
First reported by Kindsey Bernhard of Kentucky Sports Radio, who uncovered a series of tweets stemming from Patrick Fannin of Dreaming Creek Brewery in Richmond, KY, Fannin explains that Stone Brewing has issued a trademark cancellation request against Sawstone Brewing for their use of the word “stone” in the brewery’s name. Stone Brewing first filed for their mark of the word in 1997.Upon further investigation of the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Sawstone Brewing team discovered that Stone Brewing has also issued similar trademark cancellation requests in approximately 100 instances this year where entities have used the word “stone” or “bastard” in either their alcohol-related business or products. Stone Brewing is also the creator and trademark holder for Arrogant Bastard Ales.
And so here we are. The once-little-guy brewery that took on MillerCoors, and in some circles was applauded as a David taking on Goliath, is now just a Junior Goliath taking swats at all kinds of Davids.And, as should be obvious, this sort of shotgun approach to trademark cancellation is complete horseshit. If Stone were so concerned and injured by these uses of the word "stone" by other breweries, or if there were any actual customer confusion to have here, why now? Where is the evidence of harm and confusion? If it exists, why hasn't Stone sued before?Or, to take the least charitable view, is Stone simply going after its fellow craft breweries to bolster its seven-figure claims lawsuit against MillerCoors?

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 23-Jul-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Content Moderation Case Study: Can An Open Encyclopedia Handle Disinformation? (2005)

Furnished content.


Summary: Wikipedia was founded in 2001 and the open encyclopedia that anyone could edit grew much faster than most people (including its founders) expected. In 2005, one of the first big controversies concerning disinformation on Wikipedia arose, when journalist and political figure John Seigenthaler wrote an article in USA Today calling out claims on Wikipedia that, among other things, he was involved in the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy (for whom he worked for a time).The entry in question read:

John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s. For a short time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1972, and returned to the United States in 1984.He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter.
Two months before publishing the USA Today article, Seigenthaler reached out to Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales and requested that his entry be deleted. It was, but other Wikipedia users soon brought it back, leading Seigenthaler to publish the story.
Seigenthaler referred to this entire incident as character assassination and it suddenly put the fact checking of Wikipedia into tremendous focus, leading some to question whether or not the site could even survive.Seigenthaler's article raised many questions about Wikipedia, how it was edited, and how reliable it was as a research tool. For years, Seigenthaler insisted he wouldn't edit his own entry because it would lend legitimacy to the service that he wanted no part of.The controversy received widespread media coverage, and raised many questions about how Wikipedia can and should deal with misinformation on its platform while staying true to its principles and concept as an encyclopedia built on anyone's contributions.Decisions to be made by Wikipedia:
  • Should it step in and edit Seigenthaler's entry?
  • Should it block attempts to restore the false information?
  • Should it block further edits and lock down Seigenthaler's page?
  • Should it change its overall policies regarding open editing?
Questions and policy implications to consider:
  • Are there ways to limit vandalism on an open system?
  • Were certain pages at greater risk of false information that others? If so, how should that difference be handled?
  • Will any changes decrease the trust people have in Wikipedia?
  • Will any changes increase the trust people have in Wikipedia?
Resolution: In some ways the controversy itself solved the problem in that the widespread attention resulted in many Wikipedia editors/users making sure that Seigenthaler's entry was accurate. However, it also prompted Wikipedia to implement some wider changes, including restricting the ability to create new pages to registered users, and creating a new editing policy regarding biographies of living persons. A few years later, it adjusted the policy some more to push for a more thorough review of edits to pages about living individuals.Just weeks after the incident and controversy, Nature published a study claiming that Wikipedia was equally as reliable as the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica.Seigenthaler continued to question the entire Wikipedia concept for years. Separately, while in the USA Today piece, Seigenthaler detailed his failed efforts to track down who had made the edits (including explaining how he considered possible legal action), the person who created the page, Brian Chase came forward a few weeks after the story went viral, saying it was just a joke that he regretted.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 23-Jul-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



July 2020
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  (1049)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (164)
 -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