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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Moveon.org launches attack against Fox/ Fox trademarking 'fair and balanced'. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Moveon.org launches attack against Fox/ Fox trademarking 'fair and balanced'
by skullaria at 8:01 pm EDT, Jul 21, 2004

Common Cause, MoveOn.org, and a bunch of other organizations have launched a campaign to take on Fox for pretending partisan news is "fair and balanced." They've posted a really horrifying but funny video clip highlighting Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy as well as a complaint to the FTC at:

http://www.moveon.org/fox/

Check it out and send them some email if you like. The plan is to deluge them.

The challenges to Fox's partisanship are mounting. It's crucial that we voice our disgust with Fox's deceptive advertising now.

I used the following in my message body - I follow web law very closely and thus trademark and copyright laws. I know this passage in the Lanham act that says that generic trademarks are not legal - This is what has kicked some granted trademarks in the bootie when challenged:

It is a fundamental principle marking an outer boundary of the trademark monopoly that, although trademark rights may be acquired in a word or image with descriptive qualities, the acquisition of such rights will not prevent others from using the word or image in good faith in its descriptive sense, and not as a trademark. See Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, Inc., 537 F.2d 4, 12-13 (2d Cir. 1976); Sunmark, Inc. v. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., 64 F.3d 1055, 1058 (7th Cir. 1995); United States Shoe Corp. v. Brown Group, Inc., 740 F. Supp. 196, 198-99 (S.D.N.Y. 1990); Holzwarth v. Hulse, 14 N.Y.S.2d 181, 181 (Sup. Ct. 1939); Johnson & Johnson v. Seabury & Johnson, 67 A. 36, 38 (N.J. 1907); Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition § 28 (1995); 3A Louis Altman, Callmann on Unfair Competition, Trademarks and Monopolies § 21.24 (4th ed. 1983); Margreth Barrett, Intellectual Property 760-61 (1995). The principle is of great importance because it protects the right of society at large to use words or images in their primary descriptive sense, as against the claims of a trademark owner to exclusivity. See U.S. Shoe, 740 F. Supp. at 198-199. This common-law principle is codified in the Lanham Act, which provides that fair use is established where "the use of the name, term, or device charged to be an infringement is a use, otherwise than as a mark, . . . which is descriptive of and used fairly and in good faith only to describe the goods or services of . . . [a] party, or their geographic origin." 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4).

Fair and balanced was used as a descriptive term long before FOX news decided to take it away from the world.


 
 
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