By Dennis Baron
Psst, wanna buy a hot slogan?
“Occupy Wall Street,” the protest that put “occupy” on track to become one of the 2011 words of the year, could be derailed by a Long Island couple seeking to trademark the movement’s name.
The rapidly-spreading Occupy Wall Street protests target the huge gap between rich and poor in America and elsewhere, so on Oct. 18, Robert and Diane Maresca tried to erase their own personal income gap by filing trademark application 85449710 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so they could start selling Occupy Wall St.™ T-shirts, bumper stickers, and totebags, as well as various other tchotchkes bearing the protest name (the Marescas’ application is for “Occupy Wall St.,” using the abbreviated form of street–they haven’t expressed an interest in owning “Occupy Wall Street” as well).
The Trademark Commission will have to decide whether anyone can own the rights to the phrase “Occupy Wall Street,” which seems to have captured the public’s imagination and entered the public domain in record time–in fact, faster than you can say “Tea Party.” If so, the Commission must then consider whether the Marescas have any right to the phrase. They didn’t join the OWS protests and they may have never even been to Wall St. (according to their application, the Marescas live in West Islip, about 50 miles from the main protest site). Plus, so far as anyone can tell, they’ve never manufactured T-shirts, bags, or stickers with “Occupy Wall St.” or any other logo or design.
The Marescas are not the only ones trying to capitalize on the anticapitalist protests. There’s an episode of an MTV reality show, complete with commercial sponsors. There’s a book. There’s an Android app. And a company called Condomania is selling Occupy condoms (free samples available to the protestors). There are over 3,000 items of Occupy merchandise for sale on the ’net. A local pizza shop sells Occupy Meat, Occupy Veggie, and Occupy Vegan pizzas to the protestors at a discounted price of $15 a pie. There’s even an Occupy Wall Street iPhone™ app that looks like a combo of Tetris and Angry Birds ($4.99 at the iTunes™ App Store™).
The Occupy movement itself is trying to buy TV time to air a commercial that it made—though unlike the competition, the original OWS remains not-for-profit. But it’s not even clear that Occupy Wall Street could trademark its own name, or that, despite its new-found popularity, the word occupy could qualify as Word of the Year, since it’s not really a new
By Gayle A. Sulik
In response to increased publicity surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s questionable trademark and marketing activities, the organization published an official statement on its website, titled: “Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Sees Trademark Protection as Responsible Stewardship of Donor Funds.”
According to the statement, Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has never sued other charities or put other non-profits out of business, and the organization does not have plans to do so in the future. Apparently knitters, sandwich makers, and kite fliers who want to raise money for breast cancer or other causes should breathe easier now! Of course, there are many ways to squeeze out organizations, large and small, and Komen’s high profile, clout, and overflowing coffers work in conjunction with legal teams, cease and desist orders, and polite suggestions to encourage a political and economic climate in which only the wealthiest survive.
When the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO) closed its doors after 18 years of operation, it was because the organization did not want to give priority to fundraising over program delivery. The network of almost 400 organizations, which included advocates, institutions, and healthcare providers, provided labor-intensive programs such as referral and case management that did not have the same allure as the publicity-driven fundraising campaigns that are so appealing to sponsors. Ironically, Komen founder Nancy Brinker was also a founding member of NABCO, along with journalist Rose Kushner who also helped to establish the National Women’s Health Network, Diane Blum of Cancer Care, and Ruth Spear who was a patient and author living in New York. When NABCO closed, Komen was one of 12 nonprofit cancer and health organizations to receive non-exclusive rights to NABCO’s educational materials at no cost.
This is not to suggest that Komen played a direct role in the closing of NABCO, or that NABCO should have acted differently. The point is that decision upon decision, action upon action, organizations shape the climate in which other organizations operate. NABCO refused to perpetuate itself by catering to fundraising interests at the same time that Komen was ramping up its cause-marketing and corporate partnerships. Three years later, Komen solidified its brand with a name change and new logo, and in the current year the organization has garnered more corporate partnerships than ever. The financial incentives have taken on a life of their own. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be quibbling over trademarks and pink buckets of fried chicken.
Komen’s reputation in some circles, especially among key stakeholders in business and medicine, appears to be beyond reproach. But reputations involve more than financial portfolios, and Komen’s domineering actions against other charities (whether they move forward to an official legal objection or not) demand a solid explanation.
The public didn’t get one. But Komen’s official statement did make some clarifications, such as the number of legal oppositions and objections filed against other entities since its founding, the total amount for legal expenses reported in the most recent financial statement, and the total funds invested in programs in the last fiscal year:
- Legal oppositions against other charities through the patent and trademark process: 16
- Objections filed against companies or for-profit groups: 31
- Total legal expenses last year: $515,405
- Program budget
An important resource for artists everywhere: Beth Russell's blog Art Law for Everyone.
Beth is an Attorney in: copyright, trademark, web development, arts and entertainment. She also has classes in these areas.
"Watch me, Mom," says my son, a hundred times a day or more. This isn't the typical four-year-old's "Look what I can do!"—what he means is Look at me because I want to tell you something. He doesn't grasp that I am not hard of hearing; I don't need to watch his lips move to be sure of what he is saying. He needs to see my face to "hear" me best, and naturally he assumes the reciprocal is true.
If I don't turn quickly enough, he takes hold of my chin with one firm little hand, turning my face toward his. Yanking it, sometimes. Wookit me, Mom.
He is cuter than ever to wookit these days, thanks to the spiffy new glasses he is sporting.
Sometimes I spike up his hair so he looks like the kid from Jerry Maguire. This makes me laugh. I glance at him in my rear-view mirror and expect him to ask me if I know the human head weighs eight pounds.
When I went to put the glasses on him the first morning, he wasn't at all sure he was on board with this plan. Then Scott put on his glasses—I wear contacts, so Scott is the only bespectacled member of the household—and the boy was all of a sudden thrilled to don his own specs. You didn't tell me it was a MAN thing, Mom! Bring 'em on!
From that moment on it has been smooth sailing, though there are certain logistics he has yet to figure out, such as what to do with one's man-glasses while one is observing the time-honored man custom of sacking out on the couch on a Sunday afternoon.
This Lilting House post gets more search-engine hits than anything else I've written. Every week I amazed at how many people land on my blog via a search for "speech banana" and related terms. I thought it might be helpful if I reposted it here. This post was written in June of 2006. More recent posts on related subjects can be found in the hearing loss archive, including a photo essay about getting ear molds for hearing aids and advice regarding the newborn hearing screen.
Wonderboy's hearing loss came as a shock to us. Sure, we knew he'd failed the newborn hearing test. Three times. But those rounds of testing were administered in the NICU where there is always a humming and beeping of background noise, and the tech had told us that ambient noise could skew the test results. We had more pressing things to worry about: his (minor) heart defect; his recovery from omphalocele repair surgery; the genetic testing necessary to determine whether he had a potentially serious chromosomal syndrome; the fact that he was going home on oxygen. At least he was going home, and we tucked the hearing-test business to the back of our minds and focused on the immediate business of keeping him alive.
Every month the health department sent us a letter reminding us to have the hearing screen repeated. Sure thing, we said, just as soon as things slow down a bit. We were constantly having to take him to some specialist or another. The chromosome study came back negative: his medical issues were not due to a genetic syndrome. He was just one of those babies for whom something goes slightly awry early on in utero, resulting in a number of physical abnormalities down the line. An MRI had shown brain abnormality, but what its effects would be, no one could say: time will tell, they said. (They are still saying that.) He had extremely high muscle tone (hypertonia) and could not stretch out his arms and legs very far. His fists were tightly clenched. He started physical therapy at four months of age. He required emergency surgery to repair a double hernia with incarcerated bowel. The cardiologist was still keeping a close eye on his heart. The hearing test would just have to wait.
Besides, we told ourselves, we know he isn't deaf. He startled to loud noises. Of all the things there were to worry about, we really didn't think hearing loss was one of them.
But by six months, we had suspicions. He wasn't babbling. He didn't turn his head at the sound of my voice, lighting up with recognition before even seeing me, as our other children had. We took him back for another hearing screen.
He failed.
The audiologist said something about a "mild" hearing loss, and I thought that didn't sound too bad. "Oh, no," she told me, hastening to set me straight. "It isn't like a 'mild' fever. ANY hearing loss is serious. Most speech sounds fall at the bottom of the scale, so if you have any hearing loss at all, you're going to have trouble with speech."
As it turned out, Wonderboy's loss was a bit more serious than the audiologist first thought. Further testing placed him at the "moderate" level on the scale of mild—moderate—severe—profound. Unaided, Wonderboy's ears can't detect sounds softer than 50 decibels. Most speech sounds fall in the 20-decibel-or-lower range. Our little guy can hear vowel sounds, the louder middles of words, but few of the consonants that shape sound into speech. For Wonderboy, people probably sound a lot like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wah-WAH-wah-wah-waahh-wah. We learned about the speech banana: the area on a graph that shows where speech sounds fall in the decibel and frequency ranges. Wonderboy can't hear sounds above the horizontal 50 line on that chart.
(More or less. He has a sloping loss which is slightly better at the lower frequencies.)
By his first birthday he was wearing hearing aids, and what a huge difference we could see! Aided, he tests around the 20-decibel range. He hears and understands a great deal of what we say. He is two and a half years old now, and he is finally beginning to add some consonant sounds to his verbal speech. Daddy used to be "Ah-ee" and now he is "Gaggy." (This cracks me up. You can get a lot of mileage out of calling your husband Gag.) Grandpa is Amp-Ha. Wonderboy's baby sister is "Gay-gee." As you can see, he doesn't have a B sound yet. His M is perfect, though; I have been Mommy, clear as a bell, for over a year.
But Wonderboy's verbal speech is only part of the picture. His actual vocabulary is enormous, thanks to sign language. He uses a combination of sign and speech; we all do. Although it appears he will be primarily a verbal person as he gets older, sign language will always be an important second language for him. Hearing aids, incredible as the technology is nowadays, don't do you any good at the swimming pool. Just for instance.
Hard of hearing. It used to be a phrase that conjured up in my mind the image of a grizzled old man with an ear trumpet. What? What'd ye say? Speak up, lad! (Apparently he is a grizzled old Scotsman.) Now it applies to my son. Words pop up on a TV screen, "closed captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing," and I'll give a little mental jump: Oh! That means Wonderboy!
Watching our children learn to speak is one of the great delights of parenthood. We mothers tend to collect their funny pronunciations, their experimentation with the meanings of words. This time around, my joy has been doubled, for I get to see communication unfold in two languages. His funny little toddler signs are just as endearing as any "helidopter" or "oapymeal" ever uttered by a two-year-old. ("Oapymeal" was one of Jane's. It meant oatmeal. I served it often just to hear her say it.)
I put some links in my sidebar for American Sign Language resources. I can't say enough about the wonders and benefits of ASL, not just for deaf and hard of hearing children, but for all babies and toddlers, especially those with any type of speech delay. ASL is a beautiful, nuanced language, a visual poetry. I count myself privileged to have been put in the way of learning it. Jane is determined to certify as an interpreter someday, and I have to admit I'm a little jealous. I wish I'd learned at her age.
Wonderboy makes a fist and touches a knuckle to his cheek, wiggling the hand. "Ah-hul!" he shouts. Apple, in two languages. The speech banana? We'll get there, one way or another.
*Audiogram image courtesy of GoHear.org.
