If the current rash of courtroom events surrounding Victoria's Secret is what CEO Sharen Turney had in mind when she indicated that the company might have become "too sexy", I think there may be trouble in store for that flagship name of Limited Brands Inc. (NYSE: LTD). I don't know about you, but I find courtroom litigation anything but sexy. Unless of course, we're talking about the assistant district attorneys they cast for Law and Order.

First, Victoria's Secret pulled an 'Atomic Wedgie" on Kentucky couple, Victor and Cathy Moseley, by gaining a court order to block the couple from using a truncated version of The Victoria's Secret name. It's no big deal really because it was fairly obvious that the names "Victor's Secret" and "Victor's Little Secret" were pretty flagrant abuses of a trademarked name which deserves secure protection. The one little triumph which came out of that decade-long legal tussle was that the court determined that plaintiffs in trademark infringement cases do not need to show that the infringement actually cost them money, as revealed in a decidedly not sexy Associated Press news blurb.

Next, we find out that Juicy Couture has grabbed Victoria's Secret by the seat of the pants, regarding alleged product marketing infringement. It seems that Juicy thinks that Vicky has infringed on various aspects of packaging, color schemes and logo placement, as explained by blogger Bruce Watson. Personally, I haven't analyzed the claimed offenses. I'll leave that to the courts. I do however find the whole thing to be a bit blown out of proportion -- and very un-sexy.

You had to see this coming:

According to a BBC report, It appears that life at Craigslist has become even more interesting. As you may know, Craigslist has been embroiled in a legal tussle with Internet giant eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY). After purchasing a 28.4% stake in the company over a year ago, eBay now claims that Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark and its chief executive Jim Buckmaster have done things to disadvantage eBay's stake in the company. The BBC report didn't specify exactly what eBay claims Craiglist officials have done to "dilute" eBay's interests. Craigslist has now filed a counter suit against eBay, alleging illegal competition. You can get more information on eBay's original lawsuit here.

The BBC report states: "The lawsuit demands that eBay restore all shares of Craigslist owned by eBay or for the court to require eBay to divest its holdings in Craigslist." This demand is apparently supported by the premise that after acquiring its stake in Craigslist, eBay gleaned operating information from that company and then used it to launch Kijiji. Craigslist also insists that eBay, "[...] violated [Craigslist] trademarks and used misleading advertising on Google to run ads for its rival Kijiji site."

What a pretty picture of corporate raiding we have here. I think the outcome of this legal battle shall be dictated by two particular things. First, Craigslist will need to provide a first class package of documentation to support its legal counter claims. Second, it wouldn't hurt if it could find a judge who has been ripped off using eBay...

Both McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) and the advertising industry in general have come a long way since Ray Kroc opened the doors on the first restaurant in 1955, pulling in a whopping $366.12 that day.

It's Ronald McDonald who has become one of the industry's icons, but this, his first commercial, doesn't exhibit such potential. Check it out, and ask yourself - would it have attracted or repelled you?

I have to wonder if Martha Stewart asks for anyone's opinion before she attempts some of the moves that she does. I wanted to write a simple post regarding her settlement with shareholders stemming from her ImClone stock shares debacle but then I ran into this other interesting stuff. Now, CBS News reports that Martha Stewart has upset the native American community where she lives by filing an application to trademark a name they revere so she may use it for her own commercial purposes.

Martha would like to trademark the name "Katonah." It's the name of the village where she lives and it was the name of a 17th century Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation tribal chief. Representatives of the tribe find Martha's trademark application offensive and stand in strong opposition to the move. Ms. Stewart explains that she wishes to honor the name by using it in conjunction with a line of home furnishings and interior paint. The tribe however refuses to surrender the name to commercial status. "We welcomed her when she came, but we're frustrated and confused that she would try to exploit the town in this way," said local newspaper editor R.J. Marx in February, when his paper first broke the story.

I'm hoping that Martha will just let this thing die easy. After all, for her it's just a name. For the tribe and for the native American community at large it represents a tangible piece of heritage and I can fully understand why they stand against it being used for profit generation. Perhaps the Wisconsin tribal communities will get the idea from this situation and remove all the native American names from their casinos, but I'm thinking they probably won't.

Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX) may get its wish to own the rights to Ethiopia's regional coffee names. Starbucks had spent several months attempting to discourage the Ethiopian government from seeking trademark protection for its coffee names, but will now try to license the names from the country.

Starbucks' efforts to keep the names unprotected resulted in a predictable backlash: National media coverage and numerous organizations lashing out at Starbucks for its self-serving attitude about trademarks. Now Starbucks is doing the right thing, forking over money for the rights to distribute and market products under those names.

Starbucks has to be careful about its image. Its size and success comes with the inevitable rise in anti-Starbucks sentiment, as evidenced by sites like Ihatestarbucks.com. The company has done extremely well to date maintaining the feel of its stores, and is consistently rated one of the best companies to work for, providing benefits to part-time employees.

But blunders like the Ethiopian coffee scandal will only hurt it. The bad press Starbucks drew was probably not worth the few dollars it was trying to save.

YouTube, (NASDAQ: GOOG) awaits those clever minds that shall reap the great rewards stored within it's pixels. Sources like LonelyBloggers are already reporting that "lonelygirl15" is actively seeking sponsors. Could it be that a cornucopia of income producing opportunities is at our hands? You had better believe so!

Google itself is just beginning to poke and prod the video web world to find sound and sustainable ways to legitimize YouTube as a profit generating force to be reckoned with. The GigaOM blog reported on Google's placement of Shashi Seth to spearhead those efforts. A nice choice of personnel for the task, I might add.

But what is most intriguing to me are some of the ideas that are swirling around in regard to the ways little guy might garner some of that cash. For instance, there's an idea that successful YouTubers could solicit sponsorships for name recognition spots and trademark icon placements. These "tubers" would, for a one time fee from $50 to $500, place a company's product image or logo in the lower corner of their video as a "watermark" image similar to those ghosted logos you see in the lower right corner of most of your favorite television programs. Also being considered are product placements within user videos.

What the proposition requires is that the YouTuber must be able to document prior performance (viewership) of their videos, they must exhibit proper business acumen, they need to be registered with the proper taxing authorities as a viable business and they need to understand negotiations and contracts. It is already believed that contracts for advertising via YouTube videos are to be solicited from Coke, Pepsi, EverReady, Kodak and Sprint Nextel.

Some bright techie with gonads, smarts and some business law background is going to lay hold of this concept and form a management group strictly for negotiating YouTube advertising contracts. They need to get in right now while the door is open wide. No doubt Google is aware that these concepts will quickly take root. It will be better for everyone if an independent gets in there and wedges the door open before Google tightens up the program.

( Off in the distance, I hear the sound of someone getting filthy rich!)

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has accused former advertising executives Julie Roehm and Sean Womack of having a sexual relationship and of promoting themselves at an advertising agency involved in reviewing the retailer's business as job candidates.

Roehm, who was fired in December after being head of marketing communications for less than a year, denied Wal-Mart's claims and Womack couldn't be reached for comment, according to the New York Times. She's sued the company for breach of contract and fraud. Wal-Mart has filed a counter suit. Womack left Wal-Mart with Roehm.

It's a pity that Wal-Mart got rid of Roehm. She tried to give the retailer's advertising some much-needed pizazz. The company's advertising is as boring as ever, which at time of heightened competition from Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT) is not a good thing.

In other news, Wal-Mart withdrew its application to trade market the acronym for "Everyday Low Prices" after competitors objected, according to the Wall Street Journal. This underscores the new reality for Wal-Mart which now needs to convince customers that they can get quality along with low prices.

That's not going to be easy.

Wal-Mart needs to take a good, hard look at its brand. It's a pity that the person who was best equipped to do it is no longer with the company.

Did anyone really expect the fight be ween Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) over the term iPhone to last for long?

Intellectual property litigation is time-consuming and expensive. Companies will move mountains to resolve their disputes, which apparently has happened in this case. The Associated Press reports that the two companies agreed to allow Apple to use the name iPhone in "exchange for exploring wide-ranging `interoperability' between the companies' products in the areas of security, consumer and business communications."

I can only imagine how many hours it took the teams of lawyers involved in the case to come up with such a vague statement. Reading between the lines, it appears that Apple thought Cisco had the potential to delay the release of the iPhone. Even if Cisco eventually lost the case, that was a chance that Apple couldn't afford to take.

It remains unclear what Cisco is going to get for its troubles. All Apple agreed to do was "explore" insuring that its products would work with Cisco. That doesn't guarantee that anything will happen but it's in the best interests of both companies to try and make this relationship work.

Cisco is suing Apple, the company announced a few minutes ago, seeking an injunction against the use of the money title: "iPhone."

I was surfing around in my thrill over the new Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) "revolutionary" mobile phone yesterday, when I came across a post ruminating about the meaning behind a terse announcement from Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO). Paul Kedrosky was wondering whether it meant, basically, "Apple's caved on our demands," or, "Apple told us to screw off; expect to hear from our lawyers!"

I thought to myself, "sounds like a screw-off to me!" but then again, I'm one to read the worst between-the-lines. It's way more fun.

Turns out, the fun is truth and Apple will be defending itself if it wants to keep the little "i" in front of its phone. It's interesting to note that the company just dropped the "i" in front of "TV" yesterday (and not, as far as I know, because of any competitive or legal threat). Kedrosky called the suit "magnificently silly stuff" on the news.

It's magnificent, all right. But silly? A trademark is a trademark, am I right? Or does Apple, just by virtue of its ubiquity, deserve rights to little "i"s no matter where they appear?

With the sale of YouTube to Google, Inc. (NYSE:GOOG) there has been increased web chatter about possible lawsuits against either the new owners or the old for various copyright, and fair (or unfair) usage issues. One lawsuit that is already going forward however, is in the less-blogged-about area of trademark infringement.

From our sister blog, Blogging Ohio, comes the news that the Toledo-based Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation, a manufacturer of actual tubes (but probably not the kind a certain senator thinks the Internet is made out of) has used the domain utube.com for more than a decade. Unfortunately, since the rise of YouTube, the manufacturing company has seen unwanted hits to its website skyrocket, has had to increase bandwidth, and also had to deal with large amounts of email sent by mistake.

Sidamo. Harar. These types of coffee beans in Ethiopia speak to me more seductively than Champagne, Bordeaux, Pinot. Among coffee connieusseurs, these names are the pinnacle of all that's perfect about the bean. Naturally, Ethiopian coffee growers would like to have trademark protection for their most famous varieties.

Not if Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) has anything to do with it. The coffeeshop chain has, according to British social activist Oxfam, blocked Ethiopian farmers from trademarking their beans. If Sidamo and Harar were trademarked, Ethiopians would have more control over how the names were used, raising the price for their coffee and giving them more money -- $90-$100 million each year, says Oxfam.

Starbucks is a part of the National Coffee Association, which has filed to block the trademark application with the USPTO, and disputes that it was the company's idea. Starbucks doesn't appear to be disputing the block, however; which seems just as bad, to me. Oxfam suggests that Starbucks enter into voluntary licensing agreements with Ethiopia (and they may, indeed, do so -- Starbucks has historically made efforts to treat coffee growers fairly). I'd like to see more proaction on the part of Starbucks than "but it wasn't our idea!" and I'm disappointed with the NCA -- really, give the poor farmers their IP already!

AppleInsider is reporting that Justice Edward Mann will be handing down a ruling on the Apple vs. Apple case a week from today.

Recall that in March, Apple Corps, owner of the Beatles "Apple" trademark, brought charges against Apple Computer claiming that the terms of a 1991 settlement  were broken when Apple launched iTunes. In the previous agreement, Apple Computer agreed to not distribute music content on "physical media." Currently, Apple claims that the electronic distribution of music inherent in iTunes is not a breach of the agreement. Apple Computer also agreed to pay Apple Corps $26 million, peanuts considering the value the brand garners today.

The bear case for Apple Computer includes risks that damages might run considerably higher this time around or, worst case, that Justice Mann will order some type of restriction from use of the trademark.

That said, I would not be surprised to see some type of an agreement before the judgment as neither side will benefit from the lengthy appeals process a judgment might provoke.

Even still, while an Apple a day may keep the doctor away, apparently, it does little to keep the lawyers at bay.

Xerox ® and Kleenex ® have been fighting for decades to protect their intellectual property. Their assertion, that their trademarked names are not nouns (it's a Xerox ® copy, and a Kleenex ® tissue), has been maintained despite every common usage evidence to the contrary, whereas words like Band-Aid and Aspirin have faded into 'generic' status, losing their trademarks.

iPod, surely, is headed that direction. When my sister asked for an iPod for Christmas, I immediately thought, but does she want an iPod ® player? Or an iPod? Apple may have some serious work to do to protect its IP, what with the ubiquity of white-colored iFakes from makers like Creative and SanDisk. This article from TechNewsWorld wonders if "MP3 player and iPod may become synonymous." I'd argue that it's already happened. Even iPod's silhouette ad style is being ripped off from here to my friend's Christmas cards.

What do you think? Are iPod and MP3 player synonymous? And should Apple spend big to protect their trademark from generocide?