This week’s blog post has some local flavor to it (alcohol and tobacco to be exact) thanks to a trademark dispute between two competing liquor stores here in the St. Louis area.  Dotted across The Lou is a chain of twelve discount liquor and cigarette shops called DIRT CHEAP.  Dirt Cheap is probably best known [...]

During the latter portion of this past week, I was attending the Missouri Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference in Osage Beach (home to the beautiful Lake of the Ozarks).  As I was driving down U.S. 54 to The Happy Fisherman for dinner Wednesday evening (which has the best all-you-can-eat catfish and salad bar), I [...]

My weekly search of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board records led me to a pretty interesting situation between two competing companies in the e-commerce industry whose services you’ve probably never used if you are like the 99% of Americans who aren’t completely freaked out or paralyzed by the prospect of using their credit/debit card [...]

About 10 days ago, a friend of mine forwarded to me this brief article which talks about an unauthorized use of a trademark owned by the Columbus Blue Jackets professional hockey team.  According to the article, a campaign volunteer for Libertarian Marc Delphine of Oregon (who is running for a seat in the United States [...]

After taking last weekend off to celebrate and subsequently recover from my 31st birthday (I know you missed me), I now triumphantly return with an anecdote from the city in which I currently reside, St. Louis, Missouri.  Home of Budweiser, the Cardinals, and apparently a disgustingly filthy hotel. As some of you familiar with the [...]

Since I spent the last few weeks writing about Apple and the rampant trademark infringement happening in its iTunes App Store, I figured I’d even things out a little with an anecdote about everyone’s favorite whipping boy of the computer industry. On March 2, 2009, Microsoft filed two trademark applications seeking to register the mark [...]

Just recently, I read about a trademark dispute between two restaurants known for their hamburgers.  One has served billions and billions.  The other one has served…a lawsuit. Lion’s Tap is a small local restaurant located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.  According to its website, it has been rated as having some of the best hamburgers in [...]

Here is an interesting article regarding use of a trademark as part of a public monument: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/10/06/offbeat1.html?sid=101 To see an example of the Big Boy trademark the article refers to, please click here.  Yeah, it’s the fat kid with checkered pants. Clearly, if the Shoney’s restaurant was using the Big Boy image as a trademark [...]