Subject:  heyhey |
Author:
dawn
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Date Posted: 08:10:19 03/12/03 Wed
hey you two, how are you doing?
cal, your new job sounds fun, but tough... so many subjects! do you teach chinese?
i'll be back in singapore at the end of june. looking forward to seeing friends and family (including you guys), but not looking forward to the weather... argh!
anyways, here's an article that i found quite hilarious:
Oprah's Big "O" Victory
Tue Mar 11, 1:30 PM ET
A judge has ruled that Oprah Winfrey has not defiled the reputation of porn, erotica or sadomasochism.
Now that we've cleared that up...
Ronald Brockmeyer, the German publisher of O, a magazine of erotica and sadomasochism, has lost his legal battle against Oprah and her like-named top-selling, feel-good magazine. Brockmeyer claimed that the squeaky clean image of O, The Oprah Magazine was ruining the rep of his O, a magazine filled with colorful photos of scantily clad, sexually creative women. So in August 2001, he sued her for trademark infringement and unfair competition
U.S. District Judge John Koelt apparently doesn't think people will be too confused by the two Os. On Monday, he tossed out the lawsuit, claiming "there is no possibility of blurring in this case." Visit for more:
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Among the differences pointed out by Koelt: Brockmeyer's O features photos of "whip-bearing, naked women engaged in sadomasochistic and lesbian acts," while Oprah generally sticks to stories aimed at "helping women improve their lives guided by the performer's values."
The magazines were also created for entirely different purposes. Oprah's O, which is published by Hearst and Harpo Print LLC, was the fruit of her mega-successful book club and was based on her nickname. Brockmeyer's O started off as a Web publication in 1995 and was created to distribute erotic pics to its 100,000 subscribers around the world. In the lawsuit, he called his magazine the "premier, upscale lifestyle magazine for lovers of art, design, photography and exotic fashion."
On top of that, even though it has been around since 1995, only four issues of the porn-version of O have actually appeared on newsstands, with two of the covers featuring taglines that read "The Art of Fetish and Fashion." Oprah's O has been a top seller since 1999 and has never once featured the word "fetish" or photos of "naked women engaged in sadomasochistic and lesbian acts." In fact, every cover features Winfrey, who is neither a sadomasochist nor a lesbian, as its cover model.
"It is virtually impossible to find even a single image or article from the plaintiff's magazine that would not be jarringly out of place in O, The Oprah Magazine and vice versa," Koeltl said in a decision dated last week. "No ordinary prudent reader would view the contents of the magazines as similar and no reasonable reader seeking the contents of one magazine would turn to the other."
Brockemeyer had been seeking damages, claiming Winfrey's mag had the potential to ruin his marketing efforts because the public would falsely believe the German magazine was infringing on Winfrey's trademarks.
Reps for Winfrey could not immediately be reached for comment on her victory. But even if she had lost, it probably wouldn't have put too big a dent in her bank account. She recently made her debut on Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's richest, becoming the first African-American woman to do so. She is worth an estimated $1 billion.
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