citizenvox.org posts: Michigan company loses Internet trademark case, told to grin and bear it.

The lawsuits are coming as fast as we can defend them.

This has to be in the top five dumbest copyright threats I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot. Oregon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Justia.com threatening a copyright lawsuit for republishing Oregon law. The state concedes that the text of the law is not copyrighted, but claims that the numbering, arrangement, and annotations of the law are. There is nothing preventing states from copyrighting works. But (and I can't believe it is even necessary to say this) the idea that democratically enacted laws could be the exclusive property of the state is both absurd and frightening. Courts and prosecutors will use numbering and annotations in applying the law, so the state's attempt to separate the plain statutory text from accompanying material is baseless. Besides, Justia did not publish the annotations.

This time, Cadbury claims to own purple for chocolate. This follows T-Mobile's recent demand that Engadget stop using magenta. [HT Likelihood of Confusion]

A lawyer subpoenas a blogger after she criticizes his case in a blog post.

Lockheed Martin claims creating 3D models of a B-24 is trademark infringement. EFF disagrees. Is anyone going to confuse an image of a bomber with the actual thing?

Here's another feed I made with Yahoo! Pipes. This one reads the XML behind the iTunes store to create an automated feed of the latest free stuff. Link.

Update: Apple's changes broke this feed, but there's a blog that does this. http://freeitunessongs.blogspot.com/

 

The Trademark Blog notes a lawsuit by UPS against a lawyer named Brown who used the phrase "See What Brown Can Do For You." Link.

Via Slashdot, Blizzard has sued the creator of a World of Warcraft Bot that helps users cheat. I don't like cheating either, but it's not copyright infringement.

It seems that all the money the RIAA is taking from college students for file sharing is not being used to reimburse the artists whose copyrights were infringed. Why am I not surprised? Via Consumerist.

Consumer Law & Policy posts: ISP's Standing Up for Their Customers -- or Not