from the rejected-at-the-rim dept

A little over a year ago, we wrote about a fairly silly lawsuit filed against Netflix (and Warner Bros.) by Pepperdine University in California for trademark infringement. At issue is the Netflix show Running Point, which is a fictionalized story of a female executive thrust into ownership of a professional basketball team, inspired by the Lakers’ Jeannie Buss, who is also an Executive Producer on the show. The show’s fictional team, which is supposed to be a reference to the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, is called “The Waves”. Pepperdine’s sports teams are also called “The Waves”, which the school claimed made all of this trademark infringement.

They were wrong about that, as we said in the previous post. Creative works are given wide latitude in trademark law, specifically in that the Rogers test typically applies. Even in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s terrible ruling on parody in the case of the Bad Spaniels and Jack Daniels lawsuit, this was always a situation in which the Rogers test would definitely apply. Specifically, SCOTUS’ decision that Rogers doesn’t apply when the offending trademark is used as a source identifier, because we’re talking about a fictional team used in a wider work of fiction, meaning the use isn’t an identifier or any source.

Netflix and Warner petitioned for dismissal for those very reasons and the now the court has agreed and the suit has been dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela said ‌on Tuesday , opens new tab that the fictional Los Angeles Waves basketball team in “Running Point” did not violate the Malibu, California, school’s rights because the show did not use the “Waves” name and ​logo as trademarks.

The ruling goes into much more detail, of course. It very specifically examines whether the Rogers test applies, deciding it does based on the usage. For example:

Here, Plaintiff fails to allege that the Waves mark was used by Defendants to exploit the success of Plaintiff’s sports teams or to create an association between the Running Point series and Pepperdine’s teams. Rather, at most, the FAC shows that the Waves mark is “immediately recognized” to identify the Running Point series, and that its use is synonymous with the series. These allegations, which Plaintiff concludes show that the Waves mark is used to “identify the show” are still not sufficient to show that the Waves mark was used as a designation of source for the series. Plaintiff’s repeated use of the words “identify” and “source-identification” do not actually show how the Waves mark was used to identify the source of the series. Rather, here, Defendants clearly claim to be the source of the series.

Finally, the Court is not persuaded by Plaintiff’s arguments regarding the marketing of the show or Defendants’ behavior in similar uses. Although Plaintiff alleges that Defendants’ used the Waves mark in marketing the Running Point series, this does not alter the Court’s above analysis that the Waves mark is not used to identify the source of the series. And the fact that Defendants have obtained trademarks in fictional businesses central to their shows in the past again does not show that Defendants have used the Waves mark to identify the source of Running Point here.

The ruling goes on to note that if Rogers applies, the Lanham Act does not. With source identifying out of the equation, the only remaining question is if the use in this case is artistically relevant. As the fictional team the main character owns, the name of that team is obviously artistically relevant.

Pepperdine has been given leave to amend its complaint into something that is actually legally sound, but I’m struggling to understand what that would even be. In lieu of an amended complaint, it seems that some creative works are still protected some of the time from nonsense trademark infringement claims, even in a post Bad Spaniels world.

Filed Under: lanham act, likelihood of confusion, running point, trademark

Companies: netflix, pepperdine

Not long after the thin and light iPhone Air was launched in September, we crowned it the Phone of the Year for 2025 — not because it was the best phone ever, but because it was the most talked about handset at the time (and, arguably, I think it’s still the case today).

True enough, we’ve run a slew of stories on the iPhone Air that either heaped praise or criticised the phone to varying degrees — our full iPhone Air review called it “a new kind of Pro” handset, another of my colleagues called it “baffling”, while a third said they were conflicted about it (after using it for six months).

One major sticking point of the iPhone Air across our coverage was its steep AU$1,799 RRP relative to the specs, as it’s meant to replace the previous iPhone Plus models. My colleagues’ concerns were centred around the single camera lens and small 3,149 mAh battery.

But at a discounted price, especially if it’s as low as this deal I’ve spotted on Amazon Australia for AU$1,297 or 28% off, a current-generation iPhone that looks this good while also packing a powerful A19 Pro chipset would be a hard one to pass up if you’re on the market for a new Apple handset. At this discounted price, the 256GB iPhone Air is cheaper than the equivalent iPhone 17 that currently isn’t seeing any price drops when purchased outright.

How thin and light is the iPhone Air exactly? It measures just 5.64mm, which is a far cry from the iPhone 17’s 8mm thickness and the 17 Pro’s 8.8mm. Even the budget iPhone 17e is still much thicker at a substantial 7.88mm. It also weighs 165g, much lighter than the iPhone 17’s 177g and the Pro’s 206g.

Does its size affect its performance is the real question here.

As mentioned earlier, the iPhone Air is powered by the Apple A19 Pro chipset that’s similar to the processors of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, with benchmarks scoring better than the base iPhone 17. And given it’s now cheaper than the latter, surely that’s a no-brainer.

Governments around the world have been struggling to address the rise of industrial-scale scamming operations based in countries like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia that have cost victims billions of dollars over the past few years. The operations often have ties to Chinese organized crime, use forced labor to carry out the actual scamming, and rely on vast money laundering networks to collect a profit. They have become so widespread and ingrained in the region that even major international law enforcement collaborations targeting individual scam centers or kingpins haven’t been able to stem the tide.

The FBI said this week that “cyber-enabled” scam complaints from Americans totaled more than $17.7 billion in reported losses last year—likely a major undercount of the real total, given that many victims don’t report their experiences. Some US officials say that a major barrier to comprehensively addressing the issue is the lack of collaboration with Chinese authorities. China’s efforts to address industrial scamming, they argue, appear aimed at reducing the number of Chinese citizens being impacted rather than comprehensively stopping the activity to protect all victims around the world.

“To its credit, China has cracked down on these operations, but it has done so selectively, largely turning a blind eye to scam centers victimizing foreigners,” Reva Price, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said at a Senate hearing last month. “As a result, the Chinese criminal syndicates have been incentivized to shift toward targeting Americans.”

According to research the commission published in March, Beijing’s selective strategy has helped embolden some Chinese scammers, even those working within China, to continue operating so long as they exclusively target foreigners.

Other US-based researchers have come to similar conclusions. From 2023 to 2024, China reported a 30 percent decrease in the amount of money its citizens lost to scams, while the US suffered a more than 40 percent increase, according to congressional testimony last year by Jason Tower, who was then the Myanmar country director for the US Institute of Peace’s Program on Transnational Crime and Security in Southeast Asia. In response to Beijing’s enforcement dynamics, Tower said at the time, “the scam syndicates are increasingly pivoting to target the rest of the world, and especially Americans.”

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted last year that scam centers have been diversifying their worker pools, shifting from predominantly trafficking Chinese nationals and other Chinese speakers to entrapping people from a broader array of countries and backgrounds who speak various languages. UN researchers attributed this change in part to attackers broadening their targets to include different populations around the world. But they added that the dynamic also seemed to be a reaction to Chinese enforcement and Beijing’s efforts to protect Chinese citizens.

“China is doing more to fight fraud—like orders of magnitude more—than any other country,” says Gary Warner, a longtime digital scams researcher and director of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm DarkTower. “But I would agree that the crackdown by China on people scamming China has squeezed the balloon so to speak and led to more international and American targeting.”

The Chinese government has spent years investing in national safety campaigns warning citizens about the threat of scams and how to avoid falling victim to them. Some of the public discourse attempts to appeal to a sense of national solidarity. There’s a common meme in China, 中国人不骗中国人, literally, “Chinese people don’t deceive Chinese people” that is used to signal trust when swapping restaurant recommendations or job leads. In the context of digital scams, a variant has emerged: “Chinese don’t scam Chinese.”

Marvel Television just dropped the first trailer for The Punisher: One Last Kill, and it is exactly as intense as you would expect from a character who has never been particularly interested in playing it safe.

Jon Bernthal returns as Frank Castle this month on Disney+, and based on what the trailer shows, he is carrying a lot of weight going into this one.

The official synopsis describes Frank as someone who “searches for meaning beyond revenge, when an unexpected force pulls him back into the fight.” That is about as much as Marvel is giving away for now.

Punisher: One Last Kill trailer breakdown hints at major villain reveal

The trailer opens with Frank in a raw, vulnerable state, and clearly wrestling with his past. His old friend Curtis Hoyle appears and tries to get Frank to open up about what is going on in his life.

The way Curtis flashes in and out of the scene leaves his exact status a little ambiguous, though he survived the events of the Netflix Punisher series and is presumed to still be alive.

Frank is shown isolated, sitting in what looks like a lockdown situation surrounded by guards, suggesting he may be in custody or under surveillance at some point in the story.

The trailer then cuts through a series of intense moments. Flashback scenes show Frank’s young daughter in their family home, revisiting the tragedy that led to his transformation into the Punisher in the first place.

There is also a shot of Frank leaving a red flower at a grave marked for Lisa Barbara, his daughter, with a watch resting on the stone beside it. These are the first looks at Frank’s family in years within this version of the character’s story. Curtis’s voiceover cuts through all of this with a blunt warning, telling Frank he has no chance at what lies ahead.

From there, the trailer shifts into full Punisher mode. Frank tears through enemies using high-powered weapons and sheer physical force, jumping from buildings and shooting his way through anyone in his path.

The trailer’s final image is the one fans have been waiting for. Frank stands in his full Punisher gear and skull vest, outside a location called Gnucci’s Restaurant. This little detail is not an accident because the villain in Punisher: One Last Kill is most likely Ma Gnucci.

Who is Ma Gnucci in the Punisher comics?

For those who are not into Punisher comics, Ma Gnucci is one of Frank Castle’s most memorable adversaries. In the comics, she is the ruthless head of the Gnucci crime family, a powerful organized crime figure who operates out of New York City.

After Frank kills her sons, she declares all-out war on him, and what follows is one of the most chaotic and violent storylines in Punisher history. She is also notable for being depicted in a wheelchair, which makes her physically vulnerable but in no way diminishes how dangerous she is.

Her willingness to throw the full weight of her criminal empire at Frank makes her a credible and personal threat. No actor has been assigned the role as of writing, but the Gnucci’s Restaurant sign in the trailer’s final shot makes her involvement feel like a near certainty.

Who is in the cast of Punisher: One Last Kill?

Jon Bernthal leads the special as Frank Castle, a role he first took on in the Netflix Daredevil series before getting his own two-season Punisher show. Returning alongside him is Jason R. Moore as Curtis Hoyle, Frank’s closest friend and a former US Navy personnel.

Curtis appeared in both seasons of the original Netflix Punisher series, and his return here adds important emotional continuity to the story. The special is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, who co-wrote the script with Bernthal himself. Jon Bernthal also serves as an executive producer on the project.

When does Punisher: One Last Kill release on Disney+?

The Punisher: One Last Kill will debut on Disney+ on May 12, 2026, at 6 p.m. PT and 9 p.m. ET. The special presentation lands one week after the finale of Daredevil: Born Again Season 2.

This is not the last you will see of Frank Castle this year. The Punisher is set to appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures collaboration arriving on July 31, 2026.

Whether Frank plays a major role or shows up as a supporting presence in Spider-Man BND is still unknown. But the idea of the Punisher and Spider-Man occupying the same story is genuinely exciting, and after seeing what One Last Kill appears to be setting up, I am very much looking forward to finding out.