Brandright

Trademark law is guilty of overprotection. This overprotection pits both a company’s in-house attorneys against its own marketing professionals and the company itself against its most loyal customers. The result appears illogical, at best, to consumers witnessing the effects of this clash between a company’s marketing needs and perceived legal requirements

To Bully or not to Bully: Understanding the Role of Uncertainty in Trademark Enforcement Decisions

Companies like Starbucks and Chick-fil-A are routinely labeled trademark bullies. The term “trademark bully” is typically used to describe a large company that uses aggressive intimidation tactics and threats of prolonged trademark infringement litigation to stop small businesses and individuals from using their own trademarks where the stated claims of infringement are likely spurious or non-existent. Trademark bullying harms competition and chills the free speech interests of those seeking to use trademarks for criticism and parody as permitted by the fair use doctrine. This Article identifies two fundamental causes that interact to encourage the aggressive tactics used by trademark bullies. First, trademark law imposes a vague duty on trademark owners to “police” third party trademark use for potential infringement. This uncertain duty renders trademark owners unable to accurately predict the risk of harm that third parties pose to their trademarks. Secondly, inherent cognitive biases affecting evaluations of such risk lead to systematic judgment errors and overestimation of the risk involved, thereby encouraging aggressive trademark enforcement. This Article uses prospect theory, an empirical social science approach to understanding human decision making, to characterize the psychological phenomena, including loss aversion and overestimation of risk, that motivate trademark bullies. Prospect theory explains apparently irrational decision making by trademark bullies. Recently proposed solutions for trademark bullying mistakenly assume that the trademark bully conducts a rational cost-benefit analysis prior to acting. Better solutions require an understanding of the actual psychological processes that underlie these aggressive tactics

The Ras Activator RasGRP3 Mediates Diabetes-Induced Embryonic Defects and Affects Endothelial Cell Migration

Fetuses that develop in diabetic mothers have a higher incidence of birth defects that include cardiovascular defects, but the signaling pathways that mediate these developmental effects are poorly understood. It is reasonable to hypothesize that diabetic maternal effects are mediated by one or more pathways activated downstream of aberrant glucose metabolism, since poorly controlled maternal glucose levels correlate with the frequency and severity of the defects

Susceptibility loci revealed for bovine respiratory disease complex in pre-weaned holstein calves

BACKGROUND: Bovine respiratory disease complex (BRDC) is an infectious disease of cattle that is caused by a combination of viral and/or bacterial pathogens. Selection for cattle with reduced susceptibility to respiratory disease would provide a permanent tool for reducing the prevalence of BRDC. The objective of this study was to identify BRDC susceptibility loci in pre-weaned Holstein calves as a prerequisite to using genetic improvement as a tool for decreasing the prevalence of BRDC. High density SNP genotyping with the Illumina BovineHD BeadChip was conducted on 1257 male and 757 female Holstein calves from California (CA), and 767 calves identified as female from New Mexico (NM). Of these, 1382 were classified as BRDC cases, and 1396 were classified as controls, with all phenotypes assigned using the McGuirk health scoring system. During the acquisition of blood for DNA isolation, two deep pharyngeal and one mid-nasal diagnostic swab were obtained from each calf for the identification of bacterial and viral pathogens. Genome-wide association analyses were conducted using four analytical approaches (EIGENSTRAT, EMMAX-GRM, GBLUP and FvR). The most strongly associated SNPs from each individual analysis were ranked and evaluated for concordance. The heritability of susceptibility to BRDC in pre-weaned Holstein calves was estimated. RESULTS: The four statistical approaches produced highly concordant results for 373 top ranked SNPs that defined 126 chromosomal regions for the CA population. Similarly, in NM, 370 SNPs defined 138 genomic regions that were identified by all four approaches. When the two populations were combined (i.e., CA + NM) and analyzed, 324 SNPs defined 116 genomic regions that were associated with BRDC across all analytical methods. Heritability estimates for BRDC were 21% for both CA and NM as individual populations, but declined to 13% when the populations were combined. CONCLUSIONS: Four analytical approaches utilizing both single and multi-marker association methods revealed common genomic regions associated with BRDC susceptibility that can be further characterized and used for genomic selection. Moderate heritability estimates were observed for BRDC susceptibility in pre-weaned Holstein calves, thereby supporting the application of genomic selection to reduce the prevalence of BRDC in U.S. Holsteins. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-1164) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Of Marks and Markets: An Empirical Study of Trademark Litigation

Trademarks are increasingly valuable assets, and some companies aggressively enforce and protect these assets. Such aggressive tactics can harm small businesses and chill creativity and speech, but trademark owners are routinely told that the law requires them to stop all similar third-party trademark usage or risk abandonment of their rights. While prior scholarship has discussed how the risk of trademark abandonment is quite low, incentives built into trademark law still push companies to court. This Article presents the results of an event study utilizing an established database of trademark infringement cases to provide insight to decisionmakers on whether the stock market supports such enforcement actions when taken by publicly traded companies. Unlike in prior litigation event studies, this study finds that the market responds negatively to the plaintiff\u27s filing of the trademark suit but does not respond negatively toward the defendant. This result suggests that, unlike in patent litigation, the market may prefer that trademarks be protected outside of court. Given that corporate law protects officers and directors from liability in most circumstances, these decisionmakers have the freedom to choose more creative, strategic enforcement measures. Public companies would be wise to consider this additional source of data when balancing trademark law\u27s push toward aggressive enforcement

Of Marks and Markets: An Empirical Study of Trademark Litigation

Trademarks are increasingly valuable assets, and some companies aggressively enforce and protect these assets. Such aggressive tactics can harm small businesses and chill creativity and speech, but trademark owners are routinely told that the law requires them to stop all similar third-party trademark usage or risk abandonment of their rights. While prior scholarship has discussed how the risk of trademark abandonment is quite low, incentives built into trademark law still push companies to court. This Article presents the results of an event study utilizing an established database of trademark infringement cases to provide insight to decisionmakers on whether the stock market supports such enforcement actions when taken by publicly traded companies. Unlike in prior litigation event studies, this study finds that the market responds negatively to the plaintiff\u27s filing of the trademark suit but does not respond negatively toward the defendant. This result suggests that, unlike in patent litigation, the market may prefer that trademarks be protected outside of court. Given that corporate law protects officers and directors from liability in most circumstances, these decisionmakers have the freedom to choose more creative, strategic enforcement measures. Public companies would be wise to consider this additional source of data when balancing trademark law\u27s push toward aggressive enforcement