Tag Archive for: bullies

Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Trademark Bullies Kevin Smith’s Podcast Over Hollywood Sign

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The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is somewhat infamous for its constant trademark bullying over the famed Hollywood sign (you know the one). Its latest target is apparently the Hollywood Babble-On podcast that is done as a live show each week by radio/podcast guy Ralph Garman and filmmaker/entertainer Kevin Smith. Before the show this past weekend, Garman had tweeted out that it might be the last Hollywood Babble-On ever. In the opening minutes of their latest episode, Garman explains that they’ve received a cease and desist letter from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce “re: unauthorized use of Hollywood stylized mark and Hollywood Walk of Fame mark.”

While I haven’t seen the full cease-and-desist letter, from what Garman said on the podcast, the issue is so ridiculous that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce should be called out for blatant trademark bullying. You see, while this is the normal logo/image promoting the podcast:

At times, they’ve used other images, such as this one:

It’s that image that is apparently part of the problem (even though it’s not clear how often it was used). The Chamber of Commerce is using the Hollywood style lettering, which is an approximation of the famous Hollywood sign, and the star behind their heads (which it apparently believes is an implied reference to the stars on Hollywood’s walk of fame), to argue that this is unauthorized use of their marks. Some trademark lawyers will likely disagree, but this seems like classic trademark bullying.

If you’re unfamiliar with the podcast (and I’ll confess to being a loyal listener from Episode 1 through the latest, and got to see the show once live at Kevin’s invitation after he was on our podcast a few years ago), it’s a fun (frequently not safe for work) show looking at some highlights from the week’s entertainment news, mixed in with a series of re-occurring bits, frequently involving Garman’s rotating cast of impressions. In short, it’s two funny guys, who are both in show business and have been for many years, goofing off talking about show business, frequently mocking some of the crazier news stories coming out of that business.

In other words, there’s no way in hell that anyone in their right mind thinks that this podcast is officially sanctioned by “Hollywood” as some sort of official Hollywood product. The whole thing is kind of gently mocking some of Hollywood’s sillier foibles. Indeed, this seems like a perfect use case for the old standby in trademark law: the “moron in a hurry” test. And, to make it more relevant to the hobbies of choice of Ralph and Kevin, I think it could be argued that neither a drunk, nor a stoned “moron in a hurry” would ever face even the slightest “likelihood of confusion” that Hollywood somehow had endorsed the podcast, just because it briefly had images showing slightly askew letters and a star.

It remains one of the more frustrating aspects of trademark law that so many people believe that it means you get total control over the marks in question. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s only in cases where there is a likelihood of confusion that people would be confused and believe that the mark holder is behind (or otherwise endorses) the products and services in question. And here, that seems pretty difficult to believe. Of course, rather than fight these kinds of things out, it’s frequently much easier to just pay up, which may be what the lawyers for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce are banking on.

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Techdirt.

Big Barber Chain Bullies Owner Of Single Barbershop Over Using The Name ‘Tommy’

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It’s not always true that in the lamest trademark disputes it’s universally a big company trying to push around a much smaller company, but that does happen an awful, awful lot. For some reason, it seems that the moment a company or brand gets big enough, it suddenly transitions into a trademark bully looking to stamp out even the most benign competition.

That certainly seems to be the case with Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop chain firing off a C&D to the owner of Tommy’s Barber Shop, claiming that the shaggy public will be super-confused as to exactly who is cutting their hair in Nova Scotia.

The owner of Tommy’s Barber Shop in Dartmouth, N.S., says he has no intention of changing the name of his operation despite a cease-and-desist letter sent to him by a national chain with a similar handle. Thong Luong opened his barbershop on Albro Lake Road in 2003. On June 9, he will mark 15 years in the same spot — under the same name. He called his business Tommy’s Barber Shop because he thought people would have a hard time pronouncing his Vietnamese name, Thong.

On May 9, Luong got a letter in the mail from lawyers representing Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop alleging trademark infringement and saying, “further use of the name Tommy’s Barber Shop will cause confusion in the marketplace and depreciate the value.”

There are a couple of things to note here. Tommy Gun’s applied for its trademark in Canada in 2009. Luong opened his shop under its current name in 2003. At that time he also registered his business with the local government, something that Tommy Gun’s is insisting he change as well. Tommy Gun’s own LinkedIN page suggests that the chain was founded in 2009, meaning that Luong was using the name in commerce first. If anything, it seems that Luong should have been the one to have fired off a C&D rather than the other way around.

And yet, despite these facts, Luong knows he has an uphill fight ahead of him.

“I don’t think I have money to fight with them but I’ll try the best I can,” Luong says. “I’m kind to people and probably most people like me,” he says. “I just want to show people [I’m] just a small guy in the corner, and to get picked on by the big guy, Tommy Gun or whatever. I won’t give up my name.”

Except that Tommy Gun’s has a far greater war-chest than Luong, one which they’ve now threatened to use against him even though he was using the disputed name years before Tommy Gun’s even existed. Trademark bullying sucks.

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Techdirt.

EFF rates companies on willingness to fight ‘copyright and trademark bullies’

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Copyright and trademark law are often the weapon of choice when corporate content producers become unhappy with how their works of used, even in cases where such uses are legal.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) yesterday issued a report and scorecard revealing its assessment of how major service providers and social media platforms respond when copyright and trademark holders use those weapons indiscriminately.

From an EFF press release.

EFF examined 13 companies and issued stars if they met the baseline standards for what a service can do to defend its users’ speech against copyright and trademark bullies.  The services could receive a maximum of five stars, based on criteria including publicly documented procedures for responses to DMCA takedown notices and counter-notices, how the services handle trademark disputes, and if the company issued detailed transparency reports.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network World Paul McNamara

When student recorded bullies with iPad, school claimed it was felony wiretapping

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It’s said desperate times call for desperate measures, so a desperate teenager used his school-supplied iPad to record “proof” of students bullying him during his special education math class.
Ms. Smith’s blog