Intellectual Property Law

Hillary Clinton's Trademark Troubles

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

From today's Inside Higher Ed:

Hillary Clinton?s campaign has of late been pushing charges that Barack Obama plagiarized some phrases in his campaign speeches.

?Solutions for America? is the registered trademark of a University of Richmond program with the Pew Charitable Trusts to help local communities work on a series of social problems. The emphases of the program ? promoting child health, reviving neighborhoods, creating jobs ? have considerable overlap with Clinton campaign themes.

This one's a bit vexing, honestly, as I can see the potential for overlap and, hence, for "confusion in the marketplace"--a primary rubric by which trademark infringement is supposed to be assessed. Here's the rub, though: aren't we talking about two categorically different things here? Isn't Clinton's use of "Solutions for America" a slogan for a political campaign--something that shouldn't, in theory, exist in the marketplace per se? Now, I understand there's a tremendous marketing dimension to Presidential campaigns, but isn't the end of all that supposed to be about elected leadership and public service, not buying and selling? Or has politics become so commercial that we cannot but conflate the two anymore?

Anyway, you can read the complete article here.

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).