Comments on: Village Voice sues Yelp over "Best of $CITY" trademark

By: W Craghead

W Craghead — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:36:00 +0000

A recent talk by a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge on the massive problems with the U.S. patent system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J96KjAbEwQo

By: Daneel

Daneel — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 13:06:00 +0000

Seattle Weekly, too. But I don’t know anyone who picks that up in preference to The Stranger.

By: L_Mariachi

L_Mariachi — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:10:00 +0000

About a month ago New Times/Village Voice Media sold all their weeklies to a newly created company, Voice Media Group, composed mainly of existing VVM principals. Source. They kept Backpages dot com, the massage-hooker-etc end of the business. EDIT: Jesus, Disqus, you don't have to turn every dot com into a link. I’m not trying to promote that.

By: WhyBother

WhyBother — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:28:00 +0000

I’ll bet money here that this is less about incompetence, and more about chronic under-staffing. The solution is not for the few poor SOBs still at the PTO to be less immoral and shiftless. The solution is for legislators to either roll-back the software and business method patents establish by the court with clearer, explicit legislation, or provide more funding. The latter will probably never happen. The former would free up examiner time for real patents, and free up department-level resources that would have been wasted on them for other things (like hiring more examiners on the trademark side).

Of course, that will also probably never happen, because there are pretty tight restrictions on what WTO member states are allowed to do and still remain in compliance. For example, it wants all patent protections for a given class to be equal across member jurisdictions (makes sense). It also wants to prohibit the creation of new classes that would let members impose whatever terms they want through creative shuffling of IP. (For example, it would discourage states from creating a new “human necessities” category of patents with very short terms, then moving most of the life-saving drugs their people need out of the old drug category and into the new category.)

So between the legal headache of getting an international community on board (half of whom could still really use those drugs you insist they’ll need to pay full price for), and the domestic politics of fighting the beneficiaries of these new patents, we’re probably not going to see much progress for a while.

By: EH

EH — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:07:00 +0000

New management: New Times, Inc.

By: Handletag

Handletag — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:54:00 +0000

Was the VIllage Voice always an assholey publication, or is this new management?

By: Terazilla

Terazilla — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:15:00 +0000

Wouldn’t B-24 fundamentally be owned by the US Military, or Grummen, or whoever owns the rights to the plane itself? Or is this kind of like one of the other ridiculous things the USPTO does – the fact you can take an existing concept and patent it as new by making it happen over the internet, or on a touch screen, or what have you?

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:13:00 +0000

Businesses should pull advertising from publications such as Westword in Denver, Co and other weekly rags throughout the country that Village Voice owns.

Village Voice should be ashamed of themselves. Time to hit them where it hurts. If their publications fold, it’ll be their own damn faults.

By: Jim Thomason

Jim Thomason — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:57:00 +0000

I misread that as “Best of SCTV” and wondered how either company had managed to end up owning the rights to the show.

By: David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:56:00 +0000

Go Corynne!