Trademark in "Bimbo"

At a talk I gave to scientists at SSI-11, to introduce the scientists to concepts in intellectual property law, I mentioned the case of In re Wilcher, 40 USPQ2d 1930, to illustrate that certain terms cannot be trademarked.

In seeing the trademark to "Bimbo" on the truck shown below, one notes that there is a subtlety in the concept of scandalous or obscene: what might be a denigrating association of the word in one context might not be a denigrating use in another context.







[Seen in Hamilton, New Jersey on May 18, 2007.]

The talk at SSI-11 included many examples of intellectual property matters of relevance to scientists and engineers. IPBiz referenced the talk for its discussion of improper citation issues. The talk also got into false advertising matters associated with various books on the Kennedy assassination, including the phrase "guilty of misleading the American public" discussed in Groden v. Random House, 35 USPQ2d 1547.

[Note also the 2007 paper in Annals of Applied Statistics, which revisits issues with the bullet fragments from the assassination. One author of the paper is William Tobin.]