Fair and Balanced

[George Thompson]

Arnold Zwicky says:
> oh, of course, franken chose his (provocative) *title* in the
> hopes of
> selling more books.  that goes without saying.  what's astonishing is
> that fox should be suing him (however lamely) on the basis of Fair and
> Balanced.  that's really a lot more than franken could have hoped for,
> i think.
>
As my father would say, Fox lead with their chin on this one, and are probably already regretting it.  Perhaps we remember a case of 10 or 15 years ago, when a lawyer gave his ca. 12 year old daughter the free benefit of his otherwise very expensive services, and copyrighted for her a board game that she had invented, calling it "Nothing but Net".  McDonald's sued her from infringement of trademark, because they were about to unleash an advertising campaign using the slogan "Nothing but Net".  Eventually McDonald's noticed that it had bought for itself millions of dollars of bad publicity, and that its kid-loving image was being tarnished through its taking a grade-school kid into court.  I expect that Rupert is making a scene with some executive, right now.

I have wondered about the point that Frank Abate raised -- how can a common expression, frequently used, be trademarked?  Can I trademark "Good morning" and charge people to say it?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.