Calling them "demerits" is fully consistent with standard Australian police practice of using the most formal word or phrase to describe any situation.

It's always "The caucasian individual in question then departed the scene in a rapid manner carrying several plastic bags containing a large quantity of an illicit substance" rather than "the white guy ran off with the drugs".

And don't give me that "how can anyone sue grieving parents" crap.

I agree. Grieving parents have had it too good for too long. Screw them.

Why have people modded this as insightful? I thought it was humour.

Seriously, what are you talking about? Lowering the school zone speed limit has bred a generation of children so irresponsible that they happily throw themselves in front of cars? I was a kid thirty years ago when speed limits were infrequently observed and I can assure you most of us never looked both ways before crossing. Kids are just dumb like that. That's why school zones are 40 kph.

Then you cite this as an example of the failure of the entire Australian political system. RTFA - this is nothing to do with any political party, this is a lone nut. The Murdoch tabloids love this sort of proposal, it doesn't mean it'll ever become law.

And what in the name of all that is decent and holy is the relevance of tall poppy syndrome to any of this? Are you saying anyone successful enough to own a car should be entitled to run down pedestrians at will? Or just impolite pedestrians?

Don't get me wrong, I like an angry /. rant as much as the next poster, but next time try to make sense at some point.

That would be true if this were a real product.

I am an IP lawyer (IAAIPL). From the letter of demand, it appears that the NPB hasn't actually twigged that this is an imaginary product. Therefore even if ThinkGeek has used their trademark, they haven't used it as a trademark - i.e. to indicate the origin of a product - because there is no actual product. (I tried ordering it, it doesn't let you.)

Funnily enough, it might be different if they were shipping something, even if it was just a novelty can of dog food.

You're thinking of copyright. They're not arguing copyright infringement, they're arguing trademark infringement.

I'm an IP lawyer (IAAIPL) and putting aside the fact that this is completely ridiculous, the most obvious legal problem the NPB is going to face is that I don't think ThinkGeek was using the slogan as a trademark (which is a prerequisite for trademark infringement), given that they weren't selling an actual product. Although to be fair, I'm not sure the sale of an imaginary product under trademark law has been considered by a court before...

There is a company called Champion Data that currently does a similar thing for Australian Rules football. They generate player rankings based on a whole range of minutae. A pass is worth next to nothing if it is a short distance to an open teammate in the backline but worth a lot if it is a long accurate pass to a player in a dangerous position - and the player gets credit regardless of what happens next, so if they pass to a teammate in good position who fluffs the shot at goal, the passer still gets credit. The points are also standardised across matches so that player performance can be compared even though some matches are fast and furious and some are slow and boring. The resulting rankings often bear little relation to the regular stats because they take into account quality of possession as well as quantity. I have long thought soccer has a dearth of this sort of analysis. They tend to focus on stuff like % time of possession. Often this just means a team has been knocking the ball about in their own half, which the opposition doesn't mind at all. And "shots on target" includes both a powerful strike from close range and a puny long range effort that the goalkeeper has no problem gathering. I'm sure if the Americans cared more about soccer they'd be all over this. Look at what they've done with baseball - the statistics are substantially more engaging than the actual game.