Letter from AmeriKat II - Bits 'n Pieces

• Tea Party Trade Mark Dispute - A trial has been scheduled to begin on 6 December in Florida district court to resolve a trade mark dispute about the "Tea Party" name and political movement. The AmeriKat has been trying to ignore the "Tea Party" movement in the States because in her opinion it just calls attention to ill-informed and ignorant politics of the Bush era. However for non-US IPKat readers, the "Tea Party" political movement is a name-check of the Boston Tea Party (picture top left) - a colonial event which saw the US colonies protest against British tea taxes and colonial rule. The modern day movement is also about fighting taxes, opposition of big central government and generally, President Obama. Basically, the AmeriKat says, they are break-out Republican groups with a cutesy name [no prizes for guessing the AmeriKat's political views]. So when a Florida lawyer and long time anti-tax crusader, Fred O'Neal, registered "Tea Party" for a political party, nearly three dozen "Tea Party" groups and individuals were not happy. The judge will have to decide whether anyone has any IP rights to the name "tea party"for political parties. For more information, see this article in Reuters.

• Viacom files 'new' documents in YouTube battle - New court documents filed last Thursday in the Viacom v YouTube battle allegedly show that Google knew of YouTube's business model as being one that profited on pirated content. The filed exhibits include a 2006 slide presentation entitled "Overall Recommendations" which include "pressure premium content providers to change their model towards free" and "set up 'play first, deal later' around 'hot content.'" However, Google are saying that the documents are not new and Viacom is "trying to litigate this case in the press." Viacom's Associate General Counsel, Stanley Pierre-Louis, disagrees: "Taken together, these exhibits make clear one of our core claims in the case: that Google made a deliberate, calculated business decision not only to profit from copyright infringement, but also to use the threat of copyright infringement to try to coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google's terms." For more information see these articles in PC Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle and the AmeriKat's previous reports here.

• Pammy Anderson in fashion range dispute - Pamela Anderson is famous for many things, but her fashion range may not be one that immediately comes to mind. It may now, after US clothing brand Maggy London International filed trade mark infringement proceedings in New York district court alleging that Anderson who dubbed some of her designs as "A*Muse" infringed their earlier rights to their trade marked name "Muse" which covered their 2002 fashion range. For more information see the article in the New York Post.