With IP scholar Mark McKenna, we discuss a body of law we at least all agree should exist: trademark. Why is it essential? What are design patents? (Christian didn’t really know. But he opposes them nonetheless.) How do and should they differ from trademarks? Should there be a much shorter but partly functional protection for innovators’ identities as innovators? We discuss the example of Apple, Samsung, Android, and dilution.

This show’s links:

• Mark McKenna’s faculty profile and writing
• About the escutcheon
• About Joe Miller, the Alaskan politician
• The A.V. Club’s Podmass, featuring a write-up about our show by Dan Jakes!
• Mark McKenna, Trademark Year in Review
• Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Prods. Co.
• Wal-Mart Stores v. Samara Brothers
• Traffix Devices v. Marketing Displays
• Mark McKenna, Confusion Isn’t Everything
• Apple v. Samsung (order denying attorneys’ fees but reviewing the substance of the trade dress claims)
• Sears, Roebuck and Co. v. Stiffel Company
• Compco Corp. v. Day-Brite Lighting, Inc.
• In re Webb (reversing a ruling that a prosthesis, unobservable once implanted, could not be the subject of a design patent)
• Christopher Jobson, Welcome to Dismaland: A First Look at Banksy’s New Art Exhibition Housed Inside a Dystopian Theme Park
• Mark McKenna and Katherine Strandburg, Progress and Competition in Design
• 10-24-keyboards.jpeg">Steve Jobs’ slide containing smartphones as they existed at the moment (source article)