The Suppressed Misappropriation Origins of Trademark Antidilution Law: The Landgericht Elberfeld's Odol Opinion and Frank Schechter's The Rational Basis of Trademark Protection
Frank Schechter’s 1927 article "The Rational Basis of Trademark Protection", which remains the most cited law review article ever written on trademark law, is generally recognized as the origin of the concept of trademark dilution. Yet as is less well recognized, Schechter’s discussion of trademark dilution in "Rational Basis" relied heavily, though cagily, on the true origin of the concept: the 1924 Odol opinion of the German Landgericht Elberfeld. "Rational Basis" quotes extensively from the Odol opinion and borrows much of the opinion’s argument and terminology. Yet Schechter suppressed and apparently deliberately deleted from his quotation of the opinion its central holding, that "[i]t is opposed to good morals to appropriate thus the fruits of another’s labor in the consciousness that that other will or may thereby be damaged." This brief essay, a chapter in the forthcoming "Intellectual Property at the Edge: The Contested Contours of IP" (Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss and Jane C. Ginsburg eds. 2013), argues that Schechter deliberately sought in Rational Basis to obscure the true nature of the Odol case and of antidilution protection, and that even a century later, his effort at obfuscation remains more or less a success, at least in the United States. What Schechter sought to obscure in "Rational Basis" is that the Odol case was not, strictly speaking, a trademark case. Rather, it was a misappropriation case that happened to involve a trademark. Schechter sought to suppress this basic truth — that the concept of trademark dilution is essentially a misappropriation concept — in order to sell his proposed doctrinal reforms to an American audience altogether suspicious of misappropriation doctrine and increasingly under the sway of American Legal Realism. To do so required a great deal of finesse, or to but it more bluntly, of dissembling, and "Rational Basis" is full of it. Due both to its frequent misdirection and ambiguity and to its emphatic suppression of any suggestion that trademark dilution is a form of misappropriation, "Rational Basis" has remained an altogether open text. Concepts like "blurring" and "tarnishment" have rushed in to fill the void left in the absence of misappropriation. Even now, in the face of ever more scholarly and judicial commentary recognizing that dilution is essentially a form of "free-riding," and likely one that typically inflicts no substantial harm on the misappropriated mark, the obfuscatory nature of Schechter’s text enables the concept of dilution to survive — and thrive — behind a fog of indeterminacy.
De la dilución marcaria y otros demonios (Of Trademark Dilution and Other Demons)
<b>Spanish Abstract:</b> La dilución marcaria es uno de esos conceptos complejos de la Propiedad Industrial (PI) que figura en la mayoría de las legislaciones y que los titulares no pierden oportunidad de esgrimir en oposiciones, apelaciones e instancias judiciales. El origen de la figura es sustancialmente arbitrario y su concepto sumamente complejo y ramificado. Ello, sumado al impacto del art.16.3 del Acuerdo sobre los Aspectos de los Derechos de Propiedad Intelectual relacionados con el Comercio (ADPIC), quizá sean los motivos por los que la dilución es irregularmente aplicada por parte de las oficinas de la propiedad industrial. En Colombia, también ocurren casos de aplicación excesiva de la figura de la dilución. Uno reciente, SD2016/0033175, servirá de estudio en el presente artículo para explicar algunas posturas que laceran el uso de la protección a través de la propiedad industrial por pequeños y medianos empresarios. El estudio de caso servirá también para reconocer el delicado balance que existe en la protección por confusión de las marcas notorias y cómo determinados fallos administrativos permiten la configuración de una distintividad virtualmente infinita.<br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> Trademark dilution is one of those complex concepts of Industrial Property regulated in almost every legislation and that the holders do not waste opportunity to wield in oppositions, appeals and judicial instances. The origin of the figure is substantially arbitrary and its concept extremely deep and branched. This, added to the impact of Art.16.3 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), may be the reasons why trademark dilution is irregularly applied by the Industrial Property Offices. In Colombia, we can find cases of excessive application of the figure of dilution. A recent one: SD2016/0033175, will serve as case study for this article to explain some positions that lacerate the use of protection tools of Industrial Property by small and medium entrepreneurs. The case study will also serve to recognize the delicate balance that exists in the supra confusion protection of notorious marks, and how certain administrative failures allow the configuration of a virtually infinite distinctiveness.
Data Driven Policy: The Case for Certification Research
This article describes the program of research being implemented to investigate the outcomes of certification in the U.S. and Canadian workforce and its relevance to the goal of providing policy makers with pragmatic, action-oriented recommendations. Such recommendations encompass policy issues of workforce production, regulation, distribution, financing, and oversight of credentialing organizations. Few studies exist to substantiate the association between certification credentialing and practice outcomes, thereby leaving policy makers, consumers, and nurses in a vacuum when pushed to protect the public through the credentialing vehicles. The Nursing Credentialing Research Coalition (NCRC) has embarked on a research program that will reveal the relationship between certification and its influence on a nurse’s personal, professional, and practice characteristics as well as those judged by consumers and employers. Selected findings and implications for policy are described. Certified nurses’ reports of early interventions for complications are important quality measures for policy.