Rebecca Tushnet

@rtushnet.bsky.social

5269 Followers 81 Following

Trademark, advertising, and more

An ad from the makers of Cards Against Humanity, offering a box of Bullshit. Ad says: "Literal feces, from an actual bull. Looks, smells, and tastes like shit. Because it is. A Q&A states: Is this actually poop? Answer: Yes. Is it also something that's not poop? Answer: No. Can I return it when I realize that it's actually just poop? Answer: No. And finally a customer email: "The ad was very misleading. I don't want a box of bull feces. Please cancel the order."
“Fake dashboards: Very good for more targeted warping (e.g. if you’re trying to sell a course on a specific business method) or to justify your “lifestyle.” Can be done by photoshopping screenshots or by using dedicated dashboard replicas for added realism (link in bio)” I think all of these tips are very funny, but this last one really intrigued me. Jordan was advertising a Telegram account called the “Fakify” “Larp marketplace.” Fakify has 9,000 members on Telegram and sells just two products: Software that makes fake YouTube, Shopify, Coinbase, and Fanvue dashboards and a web app that sends your phone fake notifications for Shopify, Stripe, and Whop. This software is not cheap. A fake Shopify dashboard costs $750, a YouTube dashboard costs $550. The notification app costs $100.
Lots of people at the Mosaic District watching a game
A black and yellow blanket with owls, Gothic windows, and two large Bryn Mawr owl-in-lantern logos
A sign for a juice store that asks: “why are iPhone chargers not called apple juice?”
The cottage set showing a slice of the house
Sandwich board advertising Heated Rivalry musical parody
An ad saying "Virginia is for lager lovers TM" in the same style as the "Virginia is for lovers" slogan
Tom Gault cartoon: Our Blessed Homeland/Their Barbarous Wastes, with our glorious leader/their wicked despot, our great religion/their primitive superstition, our noble populace/their backward savages, and our heroic adventurers/their brutish invaders. The two images are mirrored except for different colored flags.
Reading glasses with one square frame and one round one
A bicycle computer bracket box with a line drawing of a bicycle computer bracket
Google search result for Widow's Bay that reads "Did you mean: the next martha's vineyard and definitely not cursed"
Alex Krycek from The X-Files
Metro car advertising “Steampunk” which claims “disrupting government IT with design intelligence”
A stained glass window showing a disapproving judge
In re Ronald Bennett and Jacob Fakouri, Serial No. 85485633 (May 13, 2013): mark as a whole was merely descriptive. the degree of stylization in the applied-for mark "is not sufficiently striking, unique, or distinctive so as to create a commercial impression separate and apart from the other components of the mark.“ In re Underwater Connections, Inc., 221 USPQ 95, 96 (TTAB 1983) Descriptive for “travel tour services involving underwater diving”  In re Eight Ball, Inc., 217 USPQ 1183, 1184 (TTAB 1983) (holding mark comprising pictorial representation of cue stick and eight ball merely descriptive of billiard parlor services); Hangzhou Mengku Technology Co., Ltd and Fuzhou Mengku Technology Co., Ltd v. Shanghai Zhenglang Technology Co., Ltd, Opposition No. 91272143 (December 30, 2024] [precedential]  computer game software:  the illustration or representation need not be completely accurate, realistic or true-to-life. “[t]he ultimate guideline … is whether the design forthwith conveys an immediate idea of a feature of the goods and lacks any additional fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive matter.” 
A double-knit puzzle-patterned scarf in shades of blue and yellow-green
A specimen of a black rug with a tiny tag showing an image of an 8-ball
This place is not a place of honor... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Mock epitaph for the Southern Confederacy naming Lincoln as attending physician, Grant as undertaker, and Jeff Davis as chief mourner. It was a product of the week between Lee's surrender and Lincoln's death. Dated April 9th, 1865
Left: a donut with sprinkles and Xs for eyes on top of crossed bones; Right: X and a donut with sprinkles with "Dunkin" along the bottom.
Bella from Twilight asks Elmo: how old are you? Elmo: Elmo is three years old. Bella: how long have you been three? Elmo: a while.
Two daffodils weighed down by snow
Wait: is this the TSA line?
Postcard "Vote No on Gerrymandering! Protect minority representation" postcard with image of Obama and quote from 2020: "For too long, gerrymandering has contributed to stalled progress and warped our representative government."
Luke Skywalker: "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong."
A truck from Virginia Linen Service with a prominent "88" on it. "years" is inside the 88 and "Since 1934) is beneath it.
T-shirt with "1986 Marathon / Hopkinton-Boston" on the front
There are other reasons some schools prefer excerpts. It can be more expensive to purchase books than to assign a variety of shorter works, which are not subject to copyright restrictions and can be easily read on a laptop or tablet. In addition, with more than 20 states passing laws over the past five years that limit teaching about race, gender and sexuality, using excerpts allows schools to avoid passages dealing with banned themes.
A wall of airplane arrivals. Most are delayed; some are cancelled; none are on time
Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before. This belief may be misguided or unconscious, but it is nonetheless insuperable, and it must be accommodated, for the good of us all. What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be. The “female-coded” person, to borrow Krugman’s terminology, may feel overwhelmed by child-care costs, ashamed that she can’t acquire a mortgage, or hollowed out by long hours as an I.C.U. nurse, but such feelings do not disturb the order of the universe. This person’s duties to protect, provide, and procreate are real, but they do not take the capital “P.” This person’s opinions matter, but not decisively. The Times pundit Ezra Klein has lately suggested that Democrats consider running anti-abortion candidates in red states, even though more than three-quarters of Gen Z women support abortion rights. Rights, like jobs, can be gender-coded, and these rights are valued accordingly.
Sign directing people to polling place, askew from wind
Sign reading “why are there so many ICE thugs in facemasks?” With Kermit the Frog and banjo
Toasty's Ms on Ms (millions on millions) with round character
Toasty's Canna Loops Frootloops Milkshake with a toucan character
Teddy bear wearing hand knit Bryn Mawr hoodie
ProPublica ad: “someone on this train has the next big story. Is it you?” With URL and Signal address
Quote from Jaime Taylor, an academic library resource management systems supervisor with the University of Massachusetts: “We are trying to teach how to construct useful, exact searching,” she said. “But really [these products’ intent] is to make that not happen. The problem with that in a university library is we’re trying to teach those skills but we have tools that negate that necessity. And because those tools don’t work well, you’ve not learned the skill and you’re still getting crap results, so you’re never going to get better results because you didn’t learn the skill.”
Copyright Law Syllabus (Gen Z Remix) When: Wed/Fri 8-10am (yes, it’s early, bring coffee ☕😴) Who: Prof. Rebecca Tushnet (she/her, rhymes w/ “rush-net”) Where she at: rtushnet@law.harvard.edu. Hit her up for a Zoom, call, or in-person chat (Thursdays = best shot). 📚Texts • Free casebook online 💻 → http://copyrightbook.org • Amazon hard copy if you like dead trees 📦 ($21.98 last time 👀) • Bonus readings + pre-class vids on Canvas 🎥 (with captions if you wanna multitask). 💻 Tech Rules Wanna bring your laptop? Cool. BUT: you gotta pinky-promise ✋ it’s only for class stuff. No TikTok, no Netflix, no Among Us. Respect the vibes for your classmates. 📊 Game Plan • Slides go up after each class 🖼️. • Expect memes, images, sounds, random YouTube-level chaos 🎶. • Accessibility fam: email accessibility@law.harvard.edu if you need captions, alt text, or other support.
A narrow focus on the defendant’s ability to identify specific acts of infringement is in some tension with the historical roots of vicarious liability, as respondeat superior liability is premised on the relationship between the defendant and the tortfeasor, rather than the relationship between the defendant and the tort.
Ralph Wiggum chuckles, then says "I'm in danger."
"Why are there so many soldiers here?" in Yiddish and English
Gandalf saying "I have no memory of this place"
Chidi Anagonye saying, "Okay. But that's worse. You do get how that's worse, right?"
Protester with modified Virginia flag showing Trump as the tyrant
AI Overview claiming "Rebecca Tushnet and Jonathan Band are trwo prominent and opposing figures in the debate over Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act"
A much loved teddy bear on an extra long bed
School Board member JD Spain, Rebecca Tushnet, and child
Connections (from a few days ago) showing the group "Kinds of Fiction" as Fan, Historical, Pulp, and Science as the second identified group
Cans of beer labeled "Blueberries for All" with font and a bear drawing that strongly resembles the style of "Blueberries for Sal"
Report cover for "The Powerless Brokers: Why California Can't Build Transit" in the style of the cover of Robert J. Caro's The Power Broker
littlepinkbeast on Tumblr posted a poll: Which is the worse situation to be in? "It is not your circus, but they are your monkeys" shows 52.7% of the vote, and "It is your circus, but they are not your monkeys" shows 47.3% of the vote.
A sign reading "Little Shop of Flowers" with an Audrey II-styled plant
Sign next to Dunkin Donuts: Real coffee lovers take detour! photo by Zach Schrag
Carre de cafe--a cup of coffee in bar form
A sudoku layout where the grid is extremely tiny and the buttons to select numbers are extremely big (but the numbers are still in tiny text in the middle of the big buttons), the opposite of what would be useful
A proud mother of a first time voter, both wearing “I voted in Arlington” stickers