Or maybe you wouldn't mind if I start a company called StillSecure or Lijit?

I've been eating Parmesan cheese all of my life – long before the Internet, cell phones and CNN. Now, granted it was the crappy out-of-the-green-paper-can Kraft type, but to say that something has changed recently because of globalization is disingenuous because it's been a "problem" forever. My mother would buy the cheap junk and I'd be excited to go out to eat and get the real stuff. I have a real issue with anyone claiming "changed circumstances" 800 years later.

Furthermore, the entire goal of Trademark law is to prevent the likelihood of confusion from a consumer point of view. That's it – that's what it is for. If you want to start a car company called Lijit, or a home security company for old folks homes called Still Secure, have at it.

Question: will this ruling protect consumers by ending their "confusion?" I've read as much as I can about this case and I don't see that issue being taken into account which is the only issue that should matter in trademark cases. Are consumers confused? Do they understand the difference between these cheeses already? I'd argue (unscientifically) that if you are buying Kraft, you are never going to know the difference and if you are going to the cheese store or cheese aisle and plunking down $20 a pound for the real stuff, you already know – the label says it all today as far as place of origin.

What this ruling will do is make it so some very good "Parma-esque" producers in other regions are going to have to name their cheese differently, thus confusing consumers who no longer can find what they really want to buy. It will protect the local producers and potentially increase sales if the consumer now sees only one brand of Parmesan at their local market and feels forced to buy that particular brand. But producer protection isn't what Trademark law was meant to protect. Trademark analysis about consumer protection.

And at the end of the day, I find it silly that so much effort is going into an issue about food, just as it angers me how much time our Congress is spending tracking down doping baseball players. I wish we could all just have a nice home-cooked meal and laugh at ourselves.

Its laudable that at some point in the 8 years since then he learned his lesson.. but the question is why he hadn't learned it several years before that or why it took more than a few moments back in 2000 to do more than discover that the patent office is broken and granting bogus software patents to be against them. Unless there was some illusion the system could/would be quickly fixed and all the existing patents somehow re-examined in a reasonable amount of time.. which seems a bit naive in the real world.

I've opposed software patents since 1988 when I wrote my masters thesis at MIT about innovation in the software industry. This is not a new position for me.

Following is an exchange I had with someone – their comment first, then mine.

Commenter: "Having lived for a long time in Europe (Italy & France), where relatively local producers (including my family) of unique products are the mainstay of some regional economies – it seems reasonable to try to preserve the high quality of those ancient authentic products, and to protect their small producers from large industrial copycats in the U.S. and elsewhere (China?). You are correct that for ~800 years there was not a problem regarding cheese from Parma, but now we have a large, global interest in serious food that has encouraged domestic U.S. producers to claim that they are making real parmigiana cheese. They are not, their cheese is universally inferior to the authentic product from Parma, and they are trading on a unique, ancient brand-name that is not theirs. As you know, the same issue was resolved by the courts regarding Roquefort (see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort). There are dozens of other products – mostly food/alcohol – that, I feel, are deserving of some protection. "Scotch" whiskey, authentic blue agave "Tequila", Kentucky or Tennessee "Bourbon" whiskey, to name a few … and again, "Champagne". I don't think this is opposition to "free trade", but is a narrow application of principles of authenticity that seem reasonable. I suspect that this is one of those examples of a fundamental difference in world view between Europeans and Americans about quality and authenticity."

Feld: "Trademark protection – I have a weak and uniformed point of view. I find the whole naming thing very confusing and the rules around it weird. However, I can’t refute your argument – partly because I don’t know enough; partly because I don’t have strong enough feelings about it. "

http://www.sethlevine.com/blog/archives/2008/02/o...
> Seth Levine's VC Adventure
> Here's the 8th grade competence exam from 1895. Thank god I went through 8th grade about 90 years later…

indicating, depending on interpretation that he'd rather not have been through a more rigorous school system as in the past (contrary to most net entrepreneurs who would have loved to have learned more, and would expect innovation seeking VCs to be avid learners (as you appear to be)).. or a lack of confidence he'd have been able to keep up with other students who were being taught that material. The exam itself may have not been really given back then… but that doesn't effect the reaction to it.