I agree that J&J is probably in the right, legally speaking. But I can’t imagine the amount of money involved ($2-5 million) can be worth the negative publicity of suing the Red Cross. If this were a different sort of dispute for that amount of money, J&J should evaluate the costs and benefits and walk away rather than sue. Here, I would imagine, J&J feels forced to sue only because of the underlying law.

This is the ARC taking a mark that J+J was using previously to the ARC’s existence, to market health-care products, and trying to use it in the same field in direct competition with J+J.

Having read the ARC’s releases on this subject makes me very unsympathetic; when your argument boils down to “We do good stuff, so who cares about the law?”, you’re not going to get my sympathy.

It reminds me of how Linden Labs, the creator of Second Life, recently responded to a parody that used its logo. Instead of a cease and desist letter they sent a humorous lawyerly letter granting the parodist a “nonexclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable, revocable, limited license.” Of course such things probably don’t exist in the real world. But maybe something like them should?

Seriously, though, the way is to get the ARC licensees to purport to accept they need a license from J&J.

Even that, though, has issues, at it imposes a duty of monitoring on J&J so that they can’t be accused of having given a “naked license”.