Trademark Names

Can you rollerblade over to Kinkos and xeros a manuscript? Writers often ask about using trademarked products in stories. Not surprisingly, trademark protection is another area where the law was not really written with precise guidelines for writers. Trademark law is designed to serve two purposes: to protect the public from product confusion and to protect companies from unfair trade practices by other companies. Therefore, it applies very little to writers. Does this mean you can use trademark names however you like? Not exactly.

According to Professor Ann Bartow at the University of South Carolina, "Writers can make noncommercial use of trademarks without violating trademarks. However, companies can (and do) send threatening letters and even bring suit over such uses. Few writers or publishers have the time and money to defend such suits, so there is a widening gap between what the law allows as a technical matter, and what is allowed by trademark owners as a practical matter."

To avoid disgruntled trademark owners from taking exception to your use of their product names, certain guidelines have developed that should avoid most threatening letters:

1. Trademark names should be capitalized and spelled correctly. Don't try creating your own product that sounds like the trademarked product but is spelled differently like Orios or Crispy Crèmes. You actually increase your chances of a threatening letter because you increase (slightly) the chance that the consuming public will be confused about the name of the real product.

2. Trademark names can be used as nouns but not as verbs. If you ask the product owners what they would like most, they will tell you they would like their product name to be made up of a capitalized modifier and a generic noun: Band-Aid adhesive bandage would make them happier than Band-Aid. However, they will accept a story where the mom puts a Band-Aid and a kiss on a small child's boo boo. However, since using a trademark name as a verb always loses touch with the actual product, doing so will always result in a letter if the trademark holder catches you. So, no rollerblading in the park!

3. Trademark names should be an incidental part of your story (unless you are writing an article reporting on the product) so that you do not appear to be trading on the fame of the trademark. If your young character shares his M&Ms with his best friend, the candy company will not be upset -- but if you create a world where all food is M&Ms, you'll have to seek (and probably pay for) permission from the company. And keep the trademarked products out of the titles of your work.

4. Trademarked products should not be used in a manner suggesting they are shoddy or dangerous. If you write a story about a kid who eats at McDonalds every day for lunch and subsequently gets some terrible stomach disease, you're likely to be in for some trouble. Don't link a product with a problem.

These guidelines are not legal rules, only ways to avoid conflict with trademark holders. In fact, according to Professor Bartow, the first amendment would protect writers from losing suits in most cases. For example, suppose I wrote a murder mystery in which the victims are always conked on the head by Coke bottles. Or suppose I create a character who refers to her poor relations disdainfully as the "Wal-Mart cousins." Would the trademark holder win a lawsuit against me?

"If the characters in the mystery started referring to the killings as the Coca-Cola murders as part of the story, I think that would definitely be within the law," Professor Bartow says. "However, it is very likely that Coca-Cola would object, send threatening letter, and generally test a writer's intestinal fortitude, bank account, and commitment to the First Amendment. And Wal-Mart could try to bring an action for tarnishment or they could claim defamation and probably come up with a whole host of claims, as they can afford a team of top notch lawyers." So even if trademark law allows use of these terms in pretty much any way a writer might choose to, the companies can make what is arguably a free speech right very difficult to exercise.

Of course, a writer can simply writer and ask for permission before using the trademark. However, if permission is refused, the chances of winning a lawsuit become harder. That is why so many writers choose to take the chance. The word lawyers often choose when describing writers and the law is "risk." Writing can be a risky business. But, at least with a working knowledge of the law, we can weigh our risk intelligently.

taken from:  "The Write Words to Read"

The Institute of Children's Literature

http://www.institutechildrenslit.com

June 3, 2010

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators or SCBWI

New authors need some funding?  Try this organization...

Amazon Gives Grant to SCBWI

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has received a $25,000 grant from Amazon.com to underwrite the SCBWI’s annual Work-In-Progress grants, which are given to member authors and illustrators to assist in the completion of their books for young readers. “The mission of the Work-In-Progress Grants has always been to offer our members tangible financial support as they create work for young readers,” said Lin Oliver, SCBWI’s executive director, in a statement. “We are so pleased to count Amazon.com as a partner in one of our most vital pursuits as an organization.”

How to Become a Teacher...which way is best?

Does anyone else cringe when they hear about all the avenues that a teacher can become a teacher these days?  Having been a teacher and taught teachers, there is definitely a preparation time that needs to take place.

I've seen teachers make their way to the classroom using the online route, the field practicum route over the course of two years, and also switching careers and using their original degree plus some extra classes to get a teachers license to begin in the classroom.  Oh...and who can forget those day care center workers who consider themselves preschool teachers.  I hope I don't offend too many people, but I strongly believe that a teacher must be taught how to teach.

A recent panel of very important people met to discuss what is the best teacher preparation programs out there.  They found that there is not enough substantial data out there to determine what is the best.

Link here for the full panel report:

Expert Panel Finds No Edge for Traditional vs. Alternative

By Debra Viadero

http://www.edweek.org

Read a Loud's...RFB&D style

The national Record-a-Thon, hosted by Recording for the Blind &Dyslexic, marries a timeworn, labor-intensive practice - reading aloud for those who can't read for themselves - with 21st-century technology. Once the books are recorded - a hefty volume such as College Physics can take five months - users can either order CDs from RFB&D's library of 59,000 titles or download them and listen to Clinical Behavior Therapy or When Slavery Was Called Freedom on an iPod.

The 62-year-old RFB&D was founded to record college texts for World War II veterans, blinded or visually impaired from war injuries, to enable them to take advantage of the GI Bill, said Michael Kurdziel, the organization's chief of programs and services.

Now the target audience has changed. More than three-quarters of RFB&D's users are children and adults with dyslexia or other reading disabilities. While just 0.4 percent of the U.S. population is legally blind, dyslexia and other reading disabilities affect as much as 15 percent of the population, according to the National Institutes for Health.

For people whose dyslexia causes them to mix up letters or words, miss suffixes and prefixes, or read slowly and haltingly, "the audio text makes a big difference," says Jo Anne Simon, president of the International Dyslexia Association's New York branch. "It's quicker. And the reader isn't making mistakes. The recorded text is a more accurate representation. So [the listener] is getting the message, which is ultimately the point."

For 9-year-old RJ Taschek of Marlton, the printed word was usually cause for tears. Irene Taschek, who homeschools her son, noticed that he routinely skipped words or lines when he read. Sometimes he reversed letters. She tried borrowing audio versions of children's books from the library, so he could listen while he read, but the narrators spoke too fast, and RJ couldn't keep up.

"We were constantly rewinding the tapes. He became frustrated. I was so concerned about him hating reading. To see him struggling with it broke my heart."

Then another mother told Taschek about RFB&D's audio library, which includes children's classics such as The Boxcar Children and the Harry Potter series along with textbooks. A special playback device allows users to slow down the narration, skip backward or forward easily, or bookmark their place in the text.

"It became a key tool for his reading to improve," says Taschek of her son. "When he was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 7, he was graded at a 1.2 reading level. Twelve months later, he was at 3.5. Now he's almost done his third-grade year and he's reading at a fifth-grade level.

"It's still a struggle for him to read. He struggles with phonics. But there are no longer tears; there's no longer frustration."

Demand for audio books far outstrips the supply; only about 5 percent of existing titles are available as audio recordings, says Simon of the International Dyslexia Association. That's why she's an enthusiast of new technologies such as text-to-speech: software that can convert written text to a digitized voice.

But Kurdziel and some users of audio books fear something may be lost in that translation. Computer-generated voices, he points out, can't yet capture the nuances of poetry or the inflections of various characters in a Shakespeare play. "There's something very intimate about that human voice being recorded and listened to by thousands of users."

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic is always seeking volunteers; after a training session and reading audition, volunteers make a two-hour-a-week commitment for one year. Contact Mary McDermott, 610-265-8090, Ext. 24, or mmcdermott@rfbd.org.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20100428_Recorded_books_have_found_a_broader__younger_audience.html#ixzz0u99jdcIr

Game Show to Watch

Curtis knew the answer to a question about Scieszka's 'The Stinky Cheese Man.'

I've been sick but I'm back again and here is the latest literary news you might or might not know...

Do you know what object Laura treasures most in Little House in the Big Woods? The name of Phileas Fogg’s French valet in Around the World in 80 Days? Or who Mary Anne’s boyfriend was in the Baby-sitters Club series?* Well, the ecstatic New York City fourth- and fifth-graders who packed Scholastic’s auditorium certainly did, when the publisher hosted its second annual Ultimate Author Showdown. Luckily, the authors competing on stage did, too—mostly.

The game show, which was broadcast live to thousands of registered classrooms nationwide, kicked off the Scholastic Summer Challenge, a summerlong reading program held in association with Reading Is Fundamental and the National Summer Learning Association, with the goal of attempting to set a new world record for time spent reading during the summer.

“Today we have brought together four fierce contestants, all bestselling authors—and wrestlers,” said Jon Scieszka, in the role of Alex Trebek, “to test their knowledge of children’s books and sleeper holds.” (To be fair, the multiple choice questions never dipped into wrestling territory.) Contestants Christopher Paul Curtis, Gordon Korman, R.L. Stine, and Lisa Yee were competing for a chance to pick (at random) a classroom that would receive $3,500 in books. More than 4,000 classrooms signed up to watch the game show live online, with the first 2,650 eligible to win the prize (the entire game show can be viewed on the Scholastic Summer Challenge Web site). 

http://www.scholastic.com/summerreading/webcast/