As if intellectual property law could not become more absurd, I learned today from MSNBC that there are patents, copyrights, and trademarks for toilet paper. Georgia-Pacific which makes Quilted Northern sued Kimberly-Clark Corp., which makes Cottenelle Ultra. Georgia-Pacific introduced quilted design in Quilted Northern in the 1990s and Kimberly-Clark redesigned Cottenelle Ultra with a quilted design later. The court ruled against Georgia-Pacific arguing that Quilted Design in functional and thus cannot be trademarked.
There is a surfeit of ridiculous IP lawsuits out there, but this one ranks pretty high in my opinion. This case and all the others I am familiar with continue to demonstrate that given a choice between innovation and litigation, businesses will choose litigation every time. The temptation to use power of the State to crush competition is irresistible. Yet another one of the myriad reasons why the State along with its evil IP laws must be abolished
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