This week, the Italian design house Missoni debuted a line at discount retailer Target, resulting in sell-outs, website crashes, eBay markups, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, and so on. Clearly, Missoni is a popular brand. Upon information and belief (that’s lawyer-speak for “somebody told me”), Missoni is known for incorporating zig-zag patterns into their designs. A quick Google Image search confirms this. Even the little image that appears next to http://www.missoni.com/ in my browser bar is a zig-zag: So, the question is, can the zig-zag patterns be protected under U.S. intellectual property law?
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Archives: Business Law
Are Cloud Music Services Legal?
September 8, 2011
Over a decade ago, a teenage Sean Parker took on the music establishment with his basement project Napster and the industry has never been the same since. While Napster was ultimately shut down, various online music download services have continued to sprout up. The latest trend involves “Cloud Music Services” such as Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and Google’s Music Beta, both of which launched within the last 6 months. Music “clouds” are services that store your music on the Web and allow you to stream those songs to any computer or mobile device, such as a computer or…
The “Amazon” Tax
July 28, 2011
In an effort to bolster its struggling economy, California has joined the ranks of many other states in implementing the “Amazon” tax. California joins New York, Colorado, Hawaii, Connecticut, Texas, Illinois, Arkansas, Rhode Island, and North Carolina in enacting a law that makes online retailers subject to sales and/or use tax obligations as a result of the activities of their in-state affiliates. The Amazon tax is named after the online retailer Amazon.com because the new tax will have the biggest impact on online retailers who sell goods and have affiliates in many states. Amazon has responded by notifying 25,000 California-based…
Avoiding Issues With the New .XXX Domain
July 19, 2011
Recently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved .xxx to join the elite ranks of .edu, .org, and, of course, .com as the next domain extension. As the name implies, .xxx will effectively try to create a voluntary Internet red light district for pornographic websites. It’s not hard to imagine why .xxx would be controversial, but why is .xxx necessary? The reasoning is that it will be far easier for search engines, employers, and schools to block any domains ending in .xxx. While this is good news for schools that want to protect against adult content, it…
