Authors Deserve a Break Today

The Authors Guild is alarmed by the “Trademark Dilution Revision Act” currently under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The offending passage in the proposed legislation basically removes fair use protection for non-commercial use of trademarks, “including business names, brands, and slogans,” which the Guild fears could create an impediment to both fiction and nonfiction writers. In a worst-case scenario imagined by the Guild, a sentence like “Tom went to a McDonald’s, had a Coke, and waited for the Harley to arrive” would become actionable; more plausibly, incidents like Hershey’s lawsuit against Simon & Schuster would increasingly go against the publisher…if they even dared to put out such a cover in the first place.

While the bill is still in committee, the Guild is urging its members who have senators on the Judiciary to let them know how they feel. As it happens, that includes Charles Schumer of New York, who may be hearing from quite a few people in publishing. (Michael Cader’s also on top of this story for Publishers Lunch, and I see he’s got opinions from the ACLU and IP attorney Edward Greenberg…)

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