CBS's lawyers say you can't call your magazine "48 HR"

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

It’s the kind of story that would warm the cockles of any old MSM hack: Young, talented journalists in San Francisco decide to use all manner of digital technology and the networked wisdom of the crowd powered by social media to produce … a magazine.

In April, Mathew Honan, Sarah Rich and Alexis Madrigal were having a few cold ones at a bar in San Francisco and wondered aloud whether a magazine could be entirely produced over the course of a single weekend using an ad-hoc army of contributors and editors assembled through an all-call on Twitter and other social media.

... By Sunday at noon, the crew all went pencils down and shipped the magazine – now called 48 HR: Hustle – to MagCloud, an on-demand printer of magazines.

... On May 11, Lauren Marcello, the assistant general counsel at CBS sent a cease and desist letter, noting that “CBS is the owner of the rights in the award-winning news magazine televison series, ‘48 Hours,’ and its companion series, including ‘48 Hours Mystery,’” adding later in the letter, “your use is unlawful and constitutes trademark infringement, dilution and unfair competition …” along with a lot of other complicated, vaguely threatening legalese.

... “To be honest, none of us even knew that there was still a program called ‘48 Hours,’ so it never crossed our mind,” said Mr. Honan. “When we were finished, we all felt like we had accomplished something significant, that there was a magazine there. It is the thingness of it, the physical evidence of the weekend that is so great. But the unfortunate truth I guess is that unlike what we said in the editor’s letter, you can’t do anything really large scale in contemporary society without have a legal team and a corporation.”

Read more: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/48-hr-magazine-experiment-big-hit-except-for-that-part-about-the-lawyers

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. Chuck Norris sued NBC...

...because "Law and Order" are the trademarked names of his left and right legs.

[lpbk2713]

5. Kinda like Spunk & Moxie huh?

[CrispyQ]

2. Just a few weeks ago,

a friend of mine, who puts out an ezine called "The Virtual Entrepreneur," received a cease & desist letter from Entrepreneur magazine for the same reason. Evidently Entrepreneur magazine has been very successful at claiming that no one else has the right to use the word entrepreneur in any type of publication.

[KittyWampus]

3. Congratulations to the group for producing their work. In this case, it sounds like CBS does have

rights. But with that much creativity, the new group should be able to come up with a tweak that will work.

[pinboy3niner]

4. Maybe they could call it "That's Hot" or "You're Fired" nt

[Newest Reality]

6. Has 47 & 1/2 HRS been claimed yet? - nt

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. "The thingness of it." Good god. Sounds like CBS did the world a big favor.

[Robb]

8. "...none of us even knew that there was still a program called ‘48 Hours,’"

:rofl:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. "Dudes! They say '48 Hours' is taken already. How about, um, 'Time?'

[Romulox]

13. You're way off base. This is NEWS! And we're putting out exactly 1 every WEEK.

Let's call it "The Christian Science Monitor"!

[Duer 157099]

10. Or "2 days" or "Two Days"

But then I suppose The Today Show would get it's panties all in a wad.

This covetedness of words in our society should contribute to our downfall

[hobbit709]

11. Call it 2880 Minutes.

[Statistical]

14. +1. Or just 2880

[Romulox]

12. Maybe this brain-trust should've tweeted an attorney?

You can't like own a trademark, man! Oh wait...I'm just getting a tweet. Apparently you CAN! :eyes: