motherweary

1. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,442,140


2. (SOUND) Reg. No. 3,411,881


3. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,471,345


4. (SOUND) Reg. No. 916,522


5. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,519,203


6. (SOUND) Reg. No. 1,395,550


7. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,000,732


8. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,210,506


9. (SOUND) Reg. No. 2,450,525


10. (SOUND) Reg. No. 1,700,895

Links courtesy of the inestimable John Welch at The TTABlog

I worked with him for close to 40 years: hour by hour, I think I spent more time in his company than that of anyone else in my life.

Harris Zimmerman, respected Bay Area attorney and mediator, died on May 20, 2009, at Summit Hospital in Oakland, California, of complications from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 89.

Mr. Zimmerman was born on November 29, 1919, in Omaha, Nebraska. When he was two, the family moved to Chicago.  Mr. Zimmerman graduated from Austin High School in 1936. He attended Illinois Institute of Technology, earning a B.S. in Civil Engineering while working part-time on Chicago subway and highway construction. He and two friends spent one summer surveying, in aid of which they pooled their money and, for $50.00, bought a Model T Ford which served them well, especially as they were soon capable of taking it to pieces and putting it together again, even after driving it into a lake.

He fell in love with flying at an early age and soon earned a pilot’s license. The love of flying led him, after his 1941 graduation from IIT, to work for Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle, Washington, where he found that designing structural members for B-29s and B-17s did not satisfy his desire to fly. While in Seattle he married Laura Hexter, and was still an employee of Boeing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Harris tried to enlist, but both the Army and Navy would not take him because his work was deemed too important to the war effort. The Marines had no such quibbles and in 1943 he joined the Corps, despite his slight stature. His drill instructor, a man of monumental temper but careful vocabulary, called him a “a blasted little feather merchant,” a sobriquet that he remembered with glee throughout his life. He enlisted as a private and, after Officers Training School at Quantico and numerous engineering and flight training courses, he procured a naval aviator qualification: the blasted little feather merchant flew dive bombers and torpedo bombers. He was honorably discharged as a Captain in 1945.

In 1946 he and Laura moved to the Bay Area, where he worked as a Mechanical Design Engineer. From 1947 through 1951 he attended Golden Gate University, while working days in Oakland for a patent attorney. He registered to practice before the U.S. Patent Office in 1948, passed the California Bar in 1951, and was licensed to practice in state and federal courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court. He prosecuted thousands of patent and trademark cases, served as trial counsel and expert witness both for litigants and for the Courts, was appointed Special Master for federal cases, and served as a private mediator as well as on Neutral Evaluation Panels and Mediation/Arbitration panels for the U.S. District Court.

He was a man of great patience and wisdom, slow to take offense and careful in his conclusions. Perhaps above all, he was a teacher, bringing his experience and the clarity of his thinking to everything from the conduct of the Passover Seder to lecturing on intellectual property law before magistrate judges, for legal continuing education seminars, the U.S. District Court Federal Practice Program, and classes at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.

His sense of humor was warm, and wide, and at times tremendously silly; his friendships were strong and enduring, and his commitment to family and community unfailing. His interests included Democratic politics and the arts; Judaism and archaeology; the sciences and world affairs, and anything else that caught his intelligent attention. He was a tennis player and an avid golfer for as long as he could hold a club.

He is preceded in death by his beloved son-in-law Orhan Tozun, and leaves behind his wife Laura, daughters Diane Tozun and Bess Zimmerman and son Andrew Zimmerman, and his grandson Ned Tozun and Ned’s wife Dorcas. He also leaves behind a close, extended family and the many friends and colleagues who benefited from his generosity of spirit and unselfishly shared wisdom, from his serene world-view and his bone-deep determination to find, and do, the right thing.

He was of the Greatest Generation and embodied its virtues of loyalty, level-headedness, and humility. That spirit will stay with us, but his presence is, and always will be, sorely missed.

It's just not Christmas without Neiman Marcus, right? So this year, for a mere sixty thousand dollars (that's $60,000.00) each, you and your honey can have one of these, the His & Hers Life-Sized Replica in Lego Bricks.

This, from a footnote in an INTA publication:

I had a nightmare last night.

I dreamed that I was in a huge hall (as in banquet) that had a gallery running around the second floor looking down on the main floor (where I was) and there were zombies coming to get me unless someone managed to make a bona fide sale in interstate commerce so that I could file a Statement of Use and convert their (not the zombies's, the trademark owner's)  trademark application from 1(b) Intent-to-Use to 1(a)  but the zombies were almost there (I could see them, they looked like Heath Ledger playing the Joker) and my dad showed up to warn me about the zombies but he couldn't do anything else because he's dead so he was a zombie too but a good one (if there are such) and he said I should get myself up into the gallery and barricade the stairs in the hopes of fending off the zombies until the bona fide sale in interstate commerce was made and the ITU could be converted so I ran up the stairs but there wasn't anything to barricade the stairs with except a bunch of fancy French furniture that wouldn't even slow them up and then I woke myself up and drank some water and held on to C. and eventually went back to sleep.

And I'll bet you thought trademark law didn't get exciting.

This from CNN today:

(CNN) -- Some lawmakers lashed out at the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies Wednesday for flying private jets to Washington to request taxpayer bailout money.

"It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

He added, "couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it."

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-California, asked the three CEOs to "raise their hand if they flew here commercial. Let the record show, no hands went up. Second, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand if you are planning to sell your jet in place now and fly back commercial. Let the record show, no hands went up."

CNN goes on to report that the corporations say that their CEOs are forced to travel that way. Safety concerns. Sure they are. So it's not too surprising that they are headed back to Detroit today without the $25 billion bailout they came asking for.

I just wish my Dad were alive to see this day.

According to the BBC News, Chinese scientists have discovered the fossil of a feathered but flightless dinosaur, which has been named Epidexipteryx. It is believed that the four-foot long tail feathers were used for display. And of course it's important to remember that we can't have any idea what color(s) the thing sported.

I wonder if those tail feathers were really only a come-on: Epidexipteryx was the size of a pigeon so those feathers would be a distinct disadvantage in evading or hiding from anything looking for a pigeon-sized snack. If the tail feathers really were only for display, it seems likely that the creatures lived in a fairly safe place. Or maybe the feathers served as a sort of lure, to entice prey (rather like the angler fish today). Hide in bush, drape tail forward, use those long front arm-like appendages to snatch at prey, and rip apart with that fierce beak ... could happen.

Those tail feathers are the main reason I can't shake the feeling that this is an elaborate hoax, the Piltdown Man of Chinese palaeontology. If it is, I don't want to know. In this case, ignorance (if not bliss) at least leads to some pretty blissful speculation.

This, reported in the truly excellent blog Counterfeit Chic:

Essentially the Feds intend to take over the US Service Mark registration for the mark MONGOLS®, and anyone using the mark in connection with riding motorcycles would be guilty of trademark infringement. As the Counterfeit Chic blogger points out:

What I wonder is this: since goods sporting infringing marks can be seized, does this include tattoos?

Here's another good reason to avoid McDonald's, as reported by Salon Magazine: