Marty points to a Law.com article discussing a dispute over a gas station sign. The station owner sells SHELL gas and its own brand. Shell is not happy about this, and has sued. Marty goes on to say:
"In addition to the franchisor/franchisee issues discussed in the law.com article, what we may have here possibly is a rare real-world case of Initial Interest Confusion, where the copying of a mark brings the customer to the product, but circumstances dispel confusion before purchase. Here, the SHELL sign brings the customer into the station, but the sign on the pump (and the lower price) alleviate confusion. Of course here the gas station owner is allowed to display the SHELL mark - but does that sign imply that all his gas is SHELL-brand?" [The Trademark Blog]
Like Marty, I doubt customers would be "confused" about what brand of gas they were pumping into their tank, but I can see that they would be "puzzled" about why a gas station would be selling two brands of gas. The problem here is that Shell didn't prohibit the retailer from selling competing brands of gas. Frankly, I find that puzzling too.
10:27:41 PM
The War on Drugs - Costly, not effective, and not fair. Maybe someone should suggest a way to achieve "peace with honor."
9:40:09 PM
Federal Courts & The Electronic Age - The Federal Bar Association Journal just came out, and this issue is devoted to E-Law. I really enjoyed the comments of this fine lawyer about the new frontier in handling electronic information.
4:55:46 PM
Ignorance is Bliss - Sometimes too many people working together on one thing do not create a bold new thing. Instead, they create a patchwork of compromise, where the whole is vastly less than the sum of the parts.
This happens in lawmaking too, but mostly because of the influence of lobbyists representing special interest groups. It's not just a problem of too many people, but rather it's a problem of people having too much information.
Here is my brief take on that problem. Comments are appreciated.
Hey, Sports Fans - "Lovely new column from Eric Neel today, about his incredible experience covering the ESPN awards in Hollywood last week," says Ken Layne. Ken praises Eric's sports writing mentality: "He's the guy who still has heroes, and he approaches an assignment as a particularly smart fan. It reminds me of George Plimpton's stabs at sports journalism, without the Old Money lockjaw that kept Plimpton from truly being in the moment."
9:46:15 AM
