Ch 7: Footnotes

“U-Toucan Paint”:

Christina Adair, phone interviews and email to James Lantz, U-Toucan Paint, April 10, 2012.

“Virgin Threads”:

Patricia Clark, Bloomberg Businessweek, December 9, 2014, “In 2004, the conglomerate sued a tiny apparel retailer called Virgin Threads in federal court in New York; the retailer dropped the name a year later.”

See also, Amanda Cantrell, CNN Money, June 29, 2005, Branson Trademark Suit Sparks Debate.

Branson photo: 

Richard Branson photo, Virgin.com (Image source: Virgin Money)

Sue Mr. Glaser: 

New York Times, Anthony Ramirez, May 12, 2008, “To promote New York, Handlers Take Steps to Reclaim ‘I ♥ New York”

“In fact, the only thing Mr. Glaser regrets is that, after the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, he designed a “I ♥ NY More Than Ever” logo as a patriotic symbol. The Pataki administration threatened to (but did not) sue him for trademark infringement. “The stupidity!” Mr. Glaser sputtered. “It saddened me.”

“Not been aware”: 

Most of us have been unaware of the expansions in intellectual property law, in general (not just trademark law). And for good reason. The subtleties and nuances of the changes in intellectual property law are often incomprehensible to ordinary citizens—but their impact is far reaching.

One example: in 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended copyright protection by twenty years. The law’s passage prevented things like Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain. It was a broad and profound change in the law that was sought by Disney and a host of other powerful rights-holders who wanted to protect a small set of highly profitable pieces of intellectual property. However, virtually no consideration was given to the law’s broader impact on consumers and cultural expression.

It didn’t matter. The law was passed by Congress with so little opposition that it passed with a voice vote. Since then, it has “cost consumers untold billions of dollars” and froze the public domain which has even greater costs in cultural expression. What’s important is that a handful of wealthy corporations wanted the law, and they got what they wanted.

“Dramatic decline is true small business”:

Ben Casselman, The Slow Death of American Entrepreneurship, Five Thirty-Eight, May 15, 2014, “according to the data, U.S. entrepreneurship is on the decline. … As a share of all companies, startups have been declining for more than 30 years.”

See also, JD Harrison, Washington Post, February 12, 2015, The Decline in American Entrepreneurship in Five Charts, New research shows that the country’s rate of new business creation, which peaked about decade ago, plunged more than 30 percent during the economic collapse and has been slow to bounce back following the recession. … In fact, the rate of business formation by Americans ages 20 to 34 has fallen sharply since 2010, and millennials aren’t starting nearly as many new enterprises today as baby boomers were creating when they were the same age.

See also, Leigh Buchanan, Inc Magazine, May 2015, American Entrepreneurship is Actually Vanishing, “The U.S. startup rate has been falling for decades. The Kauffman Foundation, citing its own research and drawing on U.S. Census data, concluded that the number of companies less than a year old had declined as a share of all businesses by nearly 44 percent between 1978 and 2012.”