All the things in that title — Trademark “McCarthy”ism — make for a perfect storm for pitching Martindale.com’s new podcast feature, “Martindale Mike”:
Title: COICA: McCarthyism 2.0?About the Podcast: This episode takes a look at COICA, the controversial new act before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The acronym stands for “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act,” and if passed will authorize the Attorney General to seek injunctive relief against the web address or domain name of any website that is “dedicated to infringing activities” resulting in confiscation (“civil forfeiture) of the web address by the government and the shutting down of the site by the Internet Service Provider. It also requires the AG to maintain a public listing (AKA “a black list”) of sites that the Department of Justice believes are dedicated to infringing activities, but haven’t gotten around to filing injunctions against yet. While infringement is a major problem, which costs IP owners untold millions of dollars in lost sales every year. IP defenders argue that not providing mechanisms to prevent and prosecute infringement will de-motivate IP owners from creating works and allows blatant stealing. But does COICA just go to far?About the Guest: Ron Coleman is head of the intellectual property practice at Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP, and author of the award winning blog Likelihood of Confusion.
“Award winning”? What, the ABA 100? Yeah, that’s good enough not be be misleading, if you call that an award. Anyway, the Mike part could be a play on words, which is a really trademarky thing — could mean, you know, a “mike,” as in microphone, but also does mean lawyer and interviewer Mike Mintz, “community manager” for Martindale.com, i.e., the guy tasked with helping drag old gold-standard stakeholder legal directory Martindale Hubbell into the late 20th century or maybe even better really fast.
Are there more double entendres in there too? Tell me if you think of one. You know — McCarthy, blacklist, something… has a ring to it.
Listen to the podcast, by the way. I don’t say what you think I would about this. But, ooh, the way I don’t say it!
