Blawg Review #33 is up at Overlawyered

By Kevin A. Thompson | November 21st, 2005

    About the Author

    My name is Kevin A. Thompson, I am an intellectual property attorney in Chicago, Illinois with the firm Davis McGrath LLC. I practice in the areas of domestic and international trademark, copyright, and internet issues. Internet law is my real love, especially how trademarks and copyrights intersect there. The focus of this blog is the digital world, its impact and legal framework. I write about recent issues, cases, and controversies. I also give my general thoughts about the Internet and its impact upon us and our society.

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Blawg Review #33 is up at Overlawyered

21stNov. × ’05
By Kevin A. Thompson

Blawg Review #33 has been posted over at Overlawyered. While I didn’t submit anything this week, I have been following one of the controversies posted about, namely the name change by Pajamas Media to Open Source Media. In relevant part, the quote is as follows:

Taking second place in interblog buzz is the IP sticky wicket that awaited the former Pajamas Media (discussed by Blawg Review here) when shortly before launching it decided to switch to the more dignified monicker of Open Source Media. Turned out there was already a well-known public radio show by the name of Open Source which hadn’t been consulted even though it occupied such URLs as opensourcemedia.net. Ann Althouse has been merciless (here, here and here) in needling the OSM organizers, while Prof. Bainbridge piles on with a law and economics analysis of OSM’s market.

This is a good example of why it pays to do a trademark knockout search before publicly announcing your new company name…

UPDATED TO ADD: The name will be changed back to Pajamas Media. Here’s a link to the company’s explanation of what happened. A good object lesson: don’t blindly follow advice from a marketing presentation without checking with a trademark attorney to see if the name is available.

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