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Pam is a Board Member of the Open Source Initiative and the principal of Chestek Legal in Raleigh, North Carolina. She works with creative communities, giving practical legal advice on branding, marketing, and protecting and sharing content. Pam has authored several scholarly articles, has a legal blog at Property, Intangible, and was formerly an adjunct professor at Western New England College School of Law.
Authored Comments
See the comment from John Roach. You are right that there should be no question that these kinds of uses are permissible. But the nominative fair use doctrine, which covers these situations, is not accepted by all courts and varies in scope, so there is a lot of gray area. This means, like in John's case, that third parties are overly cautious, and that the trademark holder itself can exploit the ambiguity with suit or threat of suit. Trademark owners are pretty well known for trying to suppress speech that they don't like through a trademark infringement claim.
Unidentified - awesome, thanks!
Pam