Category Archives: Trademarks

What Mad Men would be like if advertising agencies were honest

The clip is from Crazy People with Dudley Moore and Paul Reiser. The treatment of brands is especially crazy. I have to wonder in today’s product-placement culture: would a major studio permit a scene like this today? YouTube video link via anon0mouse on BoingBoing. Cross-posted at Infoglut Tumblr.

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WYNGZ are not made of wings. Or trademarks.

For the odd trademarks file: Stephen Colbert mocks DiGiorno’s new product: PIZZA and WYNGZ. Shockingly, Wyngz are not made of chicken wings. (Ok, maybe not so shockingly.) According to Colbert, the name was chosen because of laws regulating non-chicken wing products. As Colbert puts it, the term WYNGZ is “a government-mandated way of getting around […]

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Samsung’s Super Bowl ad, IP enforcement, and feedback loops

So let’s talk about the SUPER BOW…[SHHHHHH!!!] Samsung has posted a really funny video of a Super Bowl ad where a fictional Samsung executive cautions two ad writers that Samsung may not use trademarked terms such as SUPER BOWL, BALTIMORE RAVENS, or SAN FRANCISCO FORTY-NINERS. The video is a hoot, starring Seth Rogen and Paul […]

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Get out of jail free: how the WWII Allies used the game Monopoly to help POWs escape

Most of us think of Monopoly as a board game. Intellectual Property folk also think of it as a source of IP issues: trademarks in the name, trade dress of the game, copyright, and even patents. But how about this: a POW escape kit? Megan Garber writes in the Atlantic about how the WWII Allies used […]

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