I noticed this interesting use of keyword advertising on Gmail the other day: I went into my spam folder to see if an email I was expecting went in there by mistake. When I came back out, I noticed the following ad (placed by recipesource.com) on top of my inbox:
Want to email professors asking them to take a stance on a particular college-related issue? Not a safe idea if you attend Michigan State University. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) reported last week that a member of the student government at M.S.U. was found guilty of violating the university’s “spam” policy, which prohibits the sending of an unsolicited email to more than 20-30 recipients over two days.
The student emailed a hand-picked group of 391 faculty members (roughly eight percent of the total at M.S.U.), asking them to speak up about a proposal by the school administration to change the calendar. What is truly mind-boggling about the decision to discipline that student is that the administration had itself solicited comments on the change from the faculty; the email was designed to encourage the faculty to take advantage of that offer.
At least this violation of a network’s terms of use policy wasn’t found criminal.
My very good friend and former colleague Eric Goldman has recently posted a link to trademark filings and merchandising related to President-Elect Barak Obama. As you will see, the various logos (as the one in the picture) are certainly cute and/or funny, as often it happens in trademark cases. Yet, these trademarks can open several questions as to the legitimacy of using the President-Elect’s name and image without his (explicit or implicit) consent. What are the limits of these uses? Should these uses be allowed? Are they in any way offensive? Can a third party prevent others from using the President-Elect’s name and image on competing goods or services? Where is the line here between free speech and commercial use? These issues (much simplified here), and similar ones based on many similar cases, will be, in part, the subject matter of my Trademark Seminar next semester. It will be, as is always the case with this course, a lot of fun!