Intellectual Property Law

The Trademark Blog Is Eight Years Old Today

By Marty Schwimmer

I started the Trademark Blog eight years ago today. Bret Fausett was publishing the ICANN Blog at the time and I asked him for advice, and he recommended Radio Userland software. Nathan Hoover helped me install it. The first week, Ernest Svenson, Denise Howell and Tom Mighell, all lawyer-bloggers, linked to me, because they viewed legal-blogging not as a new type of brochure, but as a cause to be promoted (it's sorta both).

At that time there were not many blogs and every blogger read every other blogger's work. After two weeks, a gossip/fashion blog wrote: "I came across the Trademark Blog. At first I wondered "why?" but now I'm strangely fascinated." Which describes my reaction as well.

Once I was reporting a case in which the judge used the word 'chutzpah' which I described as an old Latin legal term for 'unmitigated gaul.' Someone studying for a PhD at UCLA emailed to inform me that chutzpah was in fact a Yiddish word.

At some point, Dennis Kennedy, who awards the Blawggies, re-named the Best Single Subject Law Blog award after the Trademark Blog, as a polite way of excluding it from future consideration.

The Trademark Blog used to be on the ABA Top 100 Law Blog list, then fell off once there were more than 100 Law Blogs.

According to AVVO, the Trademark Blog is the 25th most read legal blog.

The micro-blog version on Twitter (@trademarkblog) has 744 followers, however many of those are people trying to sell something.

According to Scribd, legal documents embedded on the Blog have been accessed a quarter of a million times. That stat at least hints at some usefulness to all this.

If you have read all 4316 blog entries over the past eight years, then you probably would be somewhat informed as to Trademark, Copyright and Domain Name law. If you have written all 4316 entries, then you would be me.

The New York State Bar, to which I am a proud to be admitted, believes that blogs are advertisements, and attempts to regulate them as such. So on that note I conclude by pointing out that I am a lawyer providing spirited service at popular prices. I rent out by the hour, day, or longer, according to the taste of the customer.

Full post as published by Trademark Blog on May 18, 2010 (boomark / email).