In what many think proves the point that electronic and print publishing will be symbiotic, the E-print publisher, Ravenous Romance, has licensed the P-print publisher Red Wheel the world English rights to twelve Ravenous paranormal romance e-books in trade paperback editions to be retailed at $12.95

Proof perhaps that the ‘subsidiary rights’ clause of the old publishing agreement might better be termed, “outsourced rights”. It will unsettled for awhile as to which is ‘subsidiary’ to what.

Ephemera is by definition written and printed matter that not intended to be retained or preserved. But six years ago the San Francisco couple, Rick and Megan Prelinger, dedicated a new library to ephemera of all kinds and descriptions in the Soma District of their city.

In their webpage, the open handed, unguarded access policy is startling for its clarity and brevity:

“We plan at first to open our library to others when we are there, and develop a model of service based on what we learn of other people’s needs. It will be an appropriation-friendly setting. Scanners, digital cameras, and CD/DVD burners will be available so that visitors can make digital copies of items of interest and take them home. There will be no charge for using the collections, though we are exploring charging for commercial reuse of the materials so as to recover some of our expenses.”

This is an amazing project for many reasons, including the fact that it has such an ‘appropriation friendly’ useable collection.

Rick Prelinger comments that “We have found that the divide between the digital and analog camps is real, but highly exaggerated by the media and by overeager analysts; and that print and electronic materials are evolving in tandem with one another, and that this evolution is retroactive as well.”

Making a home for the unwanted paper text has been the work of Aaron Lansky in salvaging Yiddish language publications at the National Yiddish Book Center in the 1980′s. His book “Outwitting History” is an engaging tale of how the acquisition program was born and evolved.

One wonders if the Google Library Project has plans to help these who are rescuing ephemera print from destruction.

We learned yesterday in the New York TImes written by Miguel Helft that Google is harvesting metadata and data from the Google Library Project to create the largest translation engine in the world. As Google has an edge of pattern recognition software to generate metadata, perhaps we will see the next Google project to expand to these libraries of salvaged analog text.

“Like its rivals in the field, most notably Microsoft and I.B.M.,
Google has fed its translation engine with transcripts of United
Nations proceedings, which are translated by humans into six
languages, and those of the European Parliament, which are translated
into 23. This raw material is used to train systems for the most
common languages.”

Musicians, retailers, music labels, songwriters, and managers have united under a new collective named Music Matters designed to educate consumers about the value of music and to encourage and assist consumers in identifying and purchasing online music from legal sources.

With such partners and supporting sites as iTunes, Rough Trade, Spotify and Play.com, and even former music pirate Napster, Music Matters carries out its mission through two main avenues, the first of which is providing a series of short animated films by several renowned artists regarding what inspired them to make music, and the second is the launch of the MUSIC MASTTERS trustmark (or certification mark) which uses a elaborate certification regime to identify legitimate legal music services for consumers. The gold e-badge MUSIC MATTER mark functions as stamp of approval for music retailers who display the mark on their websites to identify themselves as certified provider of legal music.

Certification marks, however, are neither new nor exclusive to the music industry and should be an important consideration for brand owners. Unlike a trademark, which is used to identify the commercial source of goods and services, a certification mark is used to certify the nature, quality, regional origin or characteristics of the goods or services and/or that the provision of services was by members of a union or other organization that meet certain standards. Examples include the GROWN IN IDAHO mark (owned by the Idaho Potato Commission), the UL logo (owned by Underwriters Laboratories) and the GOOD HOUSEKEEPING SEAL OF APPROVAL (created by the Good Housekeeping Institute).

Certification marks are of great value to both their owners as well the merchants who display them, allowing consumers to identify products that meet certain criteria and allowing brand owners to set themselves apart in the industry. There are, however, significant legal considerations and requirements which should be carefully explored and understood before seeking a certification mark. For instance, for the owner of certification mark cannot use the mark in connection with its own goods and services for which is it certifying others. Moreover, the owner is required to create and implement objective testing standards and criteria against which goods and services may be measured and may not discriminate against those who meet the criteria. Additionally, the owner must monitor and control other’s use of the mark to ensure its proper use.

Whether Music Matters will have any significant effect on the wave of pirated music remains to be seen…but in this author’s humble opinion, it’s a good start and serves to remind us all that music really does matter. You can read more about the collective here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you probably know that in a matter of days, Apple will be releasing its much anticipated iPad tablet. What you may not know, however, is up until now, there has been a feud simmering in the background over who owns the rights to the IPAD trademark in the U.S.

At the time Apple filed its U.S. trademark application for IPAD, Fujitsu owned a pending application for the IPAD trademark for a wireless handheld retail inventory management device, filed in March 2003. The application went abandoned in April 2009 after Fujitsu failed to respond to a request for additional information. Fujitsu successfully revised the application in June 2009, and shortly thereafter, the application was published for opposition.

In what looked to be a looming trademark battle, Apple filed multiple extensions of time over several months to oppose Fujitsu’s pending application. Fujitsu, seemingly prepared for a fight, explaining through its director of public relations in January of this year that the company was consulting its lawyers because “[i]t’s our understanding that the name is ours.”

In a rather anti-climatic end, however, the battle is seemingly over before it really got started. On March 17, Fujitsu assigned the IPAD application and trademark to Apple, leaving plenty of speculation such as how many zeros were at the end of Apple’s check or did Fujitsu’s legal team conclude that its right in the mark paled in comparison to Apple’s (not likely since Fujitsu claimed rights in the mark dating back to January 2002).

Apple is no stranger to the name game as it had a similar dispute with Cisco over the IPHONE mark after it introduced the phone in 2007, resulting in a lawsuit which eventually settled with the companies agreeing to share the name on their respective products.

This case reminds us of the benefits of fully exploring the risks and costs likely to be associated with a particular trademark prior to its selection and use. Here there is no doubt that Apple was fully aware of, contemplated (and even opposed) Fujitsu’s trademark application prior to filing its IPAD application. Indeed, Apple probably calculated the cost of acquiring the trademark from Fujitsu as part of its business expense.
Few of us, however, have the deep pockets of a Steve Jobs, and as such, would be wise to carefully consider the results of a search, and particularly any potentially problematic marks, when creating a trademark filing strategy.

Or “Cher,” or even “Carrot Top.” Either The Cobalt lawyers are not up on just how cool Lindsay Lohan is, or she needs to check back into rehab for delusional thoughts.

According to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, Ms. Lohan has sued E-trade in New York Supreme Court for misappropriation of her name and characterization for one of its “baby” commercials in which a girl baby refers to another girl baby as “that milkaholic lindsay.” According to Lohan’s attorney, such a reference clearly is an attempt to trade off the good name of Lindsay Lohan.

A couple of things her attorney might want to think about: First, all roads do not lead to your client simply because her name is Lindsay. Second, publicly giving the defendants a defense by saying the commercial is a “parody” is probably not a good way to really drive home your own case. Finally, Lindsay may have a hard time establishing that she’s known only by her first name given the fact that she’s never advertised or marketed herself solely as Lindsay, there are over 300,000 women in the country with the name Lindsay. Besides, she was never and abuser of — oh wait, she’s got one strong piece of evidence.

We’re betting this case gets the New York Heave Ho.