In an opinion penned by Judge Pierre Leval, a three-judge panel in the Second Circuit ruled that Google must face a trademark infringement lawsuit for selling keywords that trigger ads. Click here for the Recorder story. The panel reversed a lower court's dismissal of a case brought by a computer-repair company called Rescuecom. Google had recommended that a Rescuecom competitor use Rescuecom's trademark as a keyword that would bring a link to the competitor's Web site. Rescuecom objected to Google's use of the Rescuecom trademark for these purposes and sued, alleging trademark violation.
Is it possible that a company can be too aggressive in protecting its trademarks?
That was an implicit question raised in Saturday's WSJ front pager by Steve Stecklow involving the company Monster Cable Products. The California-based maker of high-end cables has taken an exceptionally aggressive stance throughout the years in protecting the word monster, on which it holds more than 70 trademarks. David Tognotti, Monster Cable's general manager and an attorney, says the company considers “Monster” a famous mark--on a par with Barbie dolls or Camel cigarettes. “We're protecting our mark as if it's a famous mark,” he said in an interview in Monster Cable's headquarters, where the walls are lined with framed copies of the company's trademarks and patents.
Tognotti cited a chapter on famous marks in the law book “McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition” by J. Thomas McCarthy, a noted expert in the field. But in an interview, McCarthy expressed doubt that Monster Cable possesses a famous mark. He said such determinations are made by courts. Mr. Tognotti acknowledges Monster Cable hasn't obtained such a court ruling.
Are social networking sites private rooms in which one can pen his or her internal thoughts without fear of others misappropriating such thoughts? Or are such sites really just bulletin boards for the world? An appellate court in California weighed in on the issue on Friday, and basically sided with the bulletin-board position. Click here for today's story, from the Recorder's Mike McKee. The backstory: Judging from the description on its Web site, Coalinga, Calif., sounds pleasant enough: “Coalinga has an excellent school system, a medical center, parks and recreation district, a 2-year community college, and enjoys a low level of crime through law-abiding citizenry.”
But the appeal of a 2-year community college and a law-abiding citizenry wasn't enough for a woman named Cynthia Moreno, who, while a student up the road at UC Berkeley, penned an online rant on her MySpace page about how much she hated Coalinga, the town in which she grew up. But the message--originally intended just for a small handful of friends--got picked up by the Coalinga newspaper, which reprinted the rant.
WSJ Law Blog April 6, 2009

Program Perspectives on Retirement Benefits: Defined-contribution plans more common than defined-benefit plans (PDF; 71 KB) Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Most workers had only one type of retirement plan in March 2008, but some had two.
Forty-three percent of private-industry workers had a defined-contribution plan and 20 percent had a defined-benefit plan. Among occupational groups, the rate of participation in retirement plans was highest among management, business, and financial employees—77 percent. The lowest rate of participation was that of service workers—25 percent.

Large Decline in Reporters Covering State Government Issues
"American Journalism Review’s latest survey of the nation’s state capitols finds a dramatic decrease in the number of newspaper reporters covering state government full time. A handful of digital news outlets are springing up to fill the breach. When will these efforts be enough to compensate for the loss of the newspaper watchdogs? [Peggy Garvin]
Related postings on newspaper closings and shift to online news

The inhabitants of Mayotte, an Indian Ocean island, voted on March 29 to become the 101st French department, and the fifth DOM (overseas department) alongside Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion. Mayotte has been a French protectorate since 1843. The change will be completed in 2011, and traditional practices of polygamy will have to be abolished. The Week magazine April 10, 2009
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2009/03/mayotte-becomes-french.html

It was 400 years ago in 1609 when Galileo first turned a small, simple telescope toward the heavens and was the first person to discover the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope. Hans Lipershey, a German-born Dutchman, moved to the Netherlands and went into the trade of making eyeglasses. As the story goes, his two daughters were playing with some discarded lenses and held one in front of the other and excitedly saw that this made the church steeple about a mile away looked much closer. In 1608, Lipershey inserted the lenses in a tube and therefore came the invention of the telescope. Lipershey took his invention to the reigning monarch of the Netherlands and he quickly saw how the military could use such an invention and wanted to keep it a secret. Lipershey applied for a patent for his invention, but was denied because his telescope was too simple to make to grant a patent. http://www.newsleader.com/article/20090405/LIFESTYLE/904050301

The Wall Street Journal Survey of CEO Compensation April 2, 2009
http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/php/CEOPAY09.html

Pages for readers to digest: story of the 10th Annual Edible Books Show and Tea
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/books/1500566,SHO-Sunday-Edible29.article

How digital assets are handled after death is such a new concern that hardly any laws are on the books addressing it. Companies such as Yahoo (which also owns photo-sharing site Flickr), Google and Facebook have the authority to delete e-mail accounts and Web sites after a user dies. New York attorney Ramon Fichman, who advises technology startups, said users' right to privacy dies with them.
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/03/23/0323plugged.html

Boat made of plastic bottles to make ocean voyage
David de Rothschild is trying to make a point, taking thousands of empty plastic bottles, lashing them together to make a boat and sailing the thing from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles. De Rothschild hopes his one-of-a-kind vessel, now being built on a San Francisco pier, will boost recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste. Except for the masts, which are metal, everything on the 60-foot catamaran is made from recycled plastic. De Rothschild's vessel, scheduled to set sail from San Francisco in April, is called the Plastiki. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/plastic.bottle.boat/