Fool’s News

While watching TV today, I saw an ad for IMPRUV lotion.  At the end of the ad the IMPRUV mark was followed by the ® symbol.

I am completely surprised that the USPTO permitted this mark to register.  The IMPRUV mark is phonetically identical to the actual word “improve,” as in “our lotion will improve your skin.”

In light of all of the inane merely descriptive refusals I receive from the USPTO, I can’t believe that the USPTO permitted the IMPRUV mark to register without even a first refusal.

Consistency at the USPTO has been incredibly lacking in recent years and only gets worse over time.

Celebrity gossip Perez Hilton (né Mario Lavandeira)  has won an injunction against those who operate the site PerezRevenge.  The PerezRevenge site styled itself as an antidote to Lavandiera’s mean-spiritedness.

Here’s the rub:  When Lavandeira started his blogging career he called his site PageSixSixSix (a rather obvious play on the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column).  The Post objected, and won.

Then he adopted the moniker Perez Hilton, an obvious reference to Hilton heiress, Paris Hilton.  Indeed, a good choice since both are famous for nothing.

“He also routinely doctors celebrity photos, arguing that sprinkling cocaine dots on them is a transformative use, entitling him to publish them.”  Ugh.

It is ironic that one becomes famous “borrowing” from others, but when others borrow from you when seeking fame, you object like it’s nobody’s business…  With any luck, Perez (and Paris) will just be a flash in the pan.

How ‘bout that picture?

The FDA is in a bit of a world of shit.  While I have many issues with the FDA, sometimes I do think the agency gets dumped on unfairly.

Where I take issue is that the FDA takes unreasonable and untenable positions with respect to proprietary drug names (i.e., trademarks); however, it cannot seem to inspect food preparation plants with any degree of success.  The agency likes to shift blame when it comes to drug names. 

Unfortunately, for the FDA, it cannot shift blame so easily when it comes to the inspection of plants.

Since this post began as sympathetic to the FDA, I digress.

Recent articles cast the FDA is a somewhat ineffectual light:  “it was shaken by the withdrawal from the market of Vioxx, a painkiller that turned out to have serious heart risks,” “more recently, outbreaks of foodborne illness have exposed haphazard oversight of the nation’s far-flung food supply chain,” “scientists in the medical devices center are in revolt over what they say is management interference”.  Other sources say, “The Food and Drug Administration is failing to meet its goals for auditing food-safety inspections.”

However, people need to understand that the use of any drugs – even those that have been on the market for a long time – involves risk.  Clinical trials can only try to identify risks presented by new drugs within a limited amount of time.  FDA approval simply means that no seriously adverse events were reported during the testing phases.  It is not a guarantee of no side effects.

It is, to me, ridiculous to sue pharmaceutical companies and blame the FDA when adverse events occur many years later.  This is especially true when, even with the adverse event, use of the pharmaceutical extended your life or the quality of life for any amount of time.

In other words, if you would have died of Very Bad Disease in 2001, but you began taking VBD Drug in 1999 which caused you to have heart disease in 2004, you’re still ahead of the game.  You’ve cheated death for 3 years.  Be grateful and move on.

From a legal perspective, I don’t see the damage.  If the status quo was death in 2001, I fail to see how life in 2004 (even with heart disease, liver disease or high blood pressure) or death in 2004 is damage.  It’s three years more than you would have had.

People seem to expect everything in life to be a guarantee.  Nothing is.  Everything is a trade off.  If you are going to sue the pharmaceutical company that makes your chemotherapy treatment then just die quietly in the corner out of side.

Margaret Hamburg, President Obama’s selection to head the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) is scheduled to face senators today as they consider her nomination.

Hamburg is a physician and a bioterrorism expert who has served as Commissioner for Health of New York City. 

The Senate is expected to grill Hamburg in light of some notable FDA failures such as salmonella outbreak in peanut products early this year, tomatoes and peppers in 2008 and spinach in 2006.