Garcia On TBT Lawsuit

The Weekly Planet's Wayne Garcia takes exception to the St. Petersburg Times reporting of Judge Moody's ruling.

Wayne Garcia in the comments of his blog post.

E&P (and AP for that matter) ran with the Times' account of the matter. And I'm not judging the merits of either sides' argument. But when Judge Moody writes that Plaintiff (Tribune) has a "substantial likelihood" of prevailing at trial, and he makes that decision when it does go to trial, I think it is a gross misreading of the situation to say that "the Trib's case seems weak." The point isn't whether the Trib abandoned its copyrights and trademarks (as it did) but whether the Times account of the judge granting a preliminary injunction was fair, complete and balanced. And it clearly wasn't. They would never, ever publish a court story about a preliminary injunction without saying whether it was granted or not. But that is exactly what Helen Huntley's piece did; it ignored the central news of the day. Judge Moody granted a preliminary injunction that the Tribune had asked for. Period.

You can read Garcia's entire post.

Garcia's point is valid. The Times transparency is lacking. The paper owned by Poynter is capable of better.

I still think the lawsuit is frivolous.

“In reviewing the marks at issue in this matter, The Tampa Times versus tbt* Tampa Bay Times, this Court finds that the mere inclusion of the regional descriptive word “Bay” is insufficient to distinguish the mark of Plaintiffs from that of Defendant as to eliminate the likelihood of confusion. This is particularly so since Defendant is changing its product from a weekly entertainment guide to a general news format published five days per week, while at the same time changing the masthead emphasis from the letters “tbt” to the words “Tampa Bay Times”.

Moody is saying that the Times shouldn't use "Tampa Bay Times" because people are too stupid to comprehend which media company the magazine belongs to. The issue should be whether the Trib has a trademark right to the name. They don't.