I am getting lots of inquiries about the progress of our law suit with Hearst. Or rather I should say Hearst's lawsuit against us since we never went after them, they targeted us.

(A quick recap for those of you who are blissfully unaware and then the latest update)

Last year the Multi Billion Dollar Hearst Corporation decided that our little magazine Cosmopolitan Domination (CosDom to our friends) infringed on the trademark for Hearst's magazine Cosmopolitan. Although they blew up a smoke screen of laughable charges (like some one would ever mistake our magazine for theirs because we had a sans serif typeface on the cover one issue) the main argument was basically that they owned the trademark "Cosmopolitan" and just our use of the word cosmopolitan as part of a description in our title was violation enough to warrant our prosecution. ie: they own the word cosmopolitan and we damn well better not use it in any conversation, specially in the context of our smutty little sex world.

When the big bad giant came and blew on my house and I wouldn't give in (not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!) they laid a big fat expensive law suit on me. Little did the Hearst people realize they were dealing with a first amendment nut. And like the gun nuts who will sacrifice all to keep their precious weapons out of the hands of the authorities. I will fight, if not to the death at least to bankruptcy and beyond, for the right to keep and freely use my weapons (words).

So although my distributor caved in and rolled over and played dead, (I can't blame them they have a lot to lose, Me I've got diddly squat) I told Hearst and their 'minions" (a term their lawyers took great umbrage with, or maybe it was the "overpaid minions" comment they didn't like) to take a flying leap and began the search for a first amendment lawyer who was willing to take on a deep pocketed war chest from a multi billion dollar bully just for a principle. To my great surprise I found a champion of justice in of all places Salt Lake City. Jerry Mooney a top notch and well known 1st amendment lawyer saw the principle of being able to use a word freely and agreed to represent our company even though he knew it might take me 10 years to pay him off win or lose. He too agreed that just because a company takes a word as their trademark it doesn't mean the word must be stricken from the dictionary and no one else can use it under its true and original meaning. (side note: if I lose this case I am planning on trademarking a magazine called THE and all you people who use my title without permission better look out!).

With Mr. Mooney's help I have seen the error of my ways in my pro se case (I can't afford to have him represent both the company AND me so I'm going it pro se which means alone). I have with drawn several of my motions and am redrafting them. I don't hold out much hope for my chances since I know NOTHING about trademark law but I'm going to go down swinging. However Mr. Mooney is proceeding logically and with lots of legal savvy to prove just how silly Hearst's claims against the company are.

We are now in the discovery stage. I (and my distributor) have been deposed and one of Hearst's editors have been deposed and I have just received a copy of a 70 page survey designed and over seen by some well respected professor at NYU and conducted by the Princeton Research & Consulting Center.

The subject of this extensive survey was one question only:
"Are consumers likely to make an association between Cosmopolitan Domination and Hearst's Cosmopolitan Magazine ? "
To answer this burning question Hearst's people mocked up a cover of a fictitious magazine called "Consentual Domination" (using one of my copyrighted photographs without my permission I should add) and showed both that cover and a cover of CosDom to a total of 239 people exiting from an adult bookstore in 8 different places around the country.

"The respondent was first asked whether the name on the cover they were then viewing made them think of the names of any other magazines. Only those who replied affirmatively then were asked:
'What other magazine name or names does this make you think of?' The principal findings and conclusions are as follows:"

Skipping the boring statistics:
"In other words, ...,upon seeing a cover for Cosmopolitan Domination 41% of all respondents said that this caused them to think of Cosmopolitan magazine
"Projecting from these findings, in the opinion of this author, approximately two out of five consumers in the target market for Cosmopolitan Domination, when exposed to that name as used on the covers of the magazine, are likely to make an association between Cosmopolitan Domination and Hearst's Cosmopolitan ."

Hearst of course, seems to think this proves something. Now I am not going to go into the correctness of the methodology of how the survey was conducted, after all this is a respected professor at NYU. and if he says that 40% of the people shown a magazine with the word cosmopolitan in the title thought of a magazine named Cosmopolitan who am I to say no. But unlike Hearst I draw a totally different conclusion from the findings. To me this means that 60% of my target market is too brain dead to even think of another magazine named Cosmopolitan when shown the very word!!!

They weren't asked if they would confuse the magazines, if they thought both magazines were the product of the same company or if they even thought either of the magazines would tarnish the name of the other all they were asked was after seeing a magazine called Cosmopolitan Domination did it bring to mind any other magazine. Thus 6 out of 10 people when SHOWN the Word cosmopolitan didn't even make the connection with a magazine called Cosmopolitan.

Wow. Maybe Cosmo isn't so damn famous after all. Maybe Hearst should be thanking me for the 5.44% of the people who answered by saying cosmopolitan magazine AND the name of a sexually oriented magazine. Maybe I'm helping to build awareness of their little publication within our target audience. I mean how many of you after actually seeing the word cosmopolitan wouldn't think "Cosmopolitan". Hell, if you saw Domination Time and were asked to name another magazine wouldn't you say "Time"? Its a given. But despite seeing the word there in black in white 60% of our potential market couldn't even come up with the title of Hearst's magazine. Hell, maybe I should start dumbing up our writing, cause 6 out of 10 of you just aren't too bright.

Lastly let me address the question of wasting time and money. I know Hearst has more money than God (at least in U.S. Banks). and I'm sure their lawyers are more than happy to keep sticking it to them at $200 to $400 per hour to rid them of the evil menace of Carter Stevens little smut rag. But I feel it is my duty to point out to Hearst that if they had just been gentlemen about this whole thing they could have settled this affair on the cheap.

According to the copy of the survey I got, Hearst "bribed" 8 adult bookstore managers $100-150 each, to allow them to do the survey out in front of their stores. (of course, they didn't bribe them, they paid them "for their assistance" but I'd like to know how many of them were on the clock at the time and how many of the bookstore owners saw cent one from their "assistance") then they paid the respondents $5 to answer their questions. This amounts to over $2 grand total and when you add in what they had to pay the hot shot NYU professor who came up with this survey and the survey company to do the survey and the lawyers to arrange for the survey to be done, you can see that in order to prove that only 4 out of ten people who see the word cosmopolitan on a magazine even think of their publication Hearst has spent over $10,000 just for this ill designed and one sided survey.

Well, the fact is that if they had come to me as gentleman they probably could have bought out Cosmopolitan Domination lock stock and barrel for not much more than they have put into this one sided match in trying to crush me forcibly. By the time we are finished it will probably cost Hearst hundreds of thousands and put me in the poor house, but unlike them I didn't initiate this pissing contest. And once challenged I will not back down.

Hundreds of thousands to crush some poor jerk they could have bought off for a tenth that amount, damn that's bad business. Too bad Hearst's board doesn't have to answer to stockholders, other- wise they would be out looking for jobs at some other big assed corporation.

So in closing, I am once again asking for a lawyer or para legal who is willing to help me pro bono in my pro se fight against these Goliaths, because I'll never stop fighting. But, my balls are starting to hurt from the pounding (translation: my income is suffering from the time and energy this struggle is eating up). (To the Hearst minions who might be reading this: Don't think this means you are wearing me down. I will never allow anybody to push me around when I think I'm in the right no matter what it takes in time, energy or income.)

I'm also putting out an appeal to any readers who might have a string of extra letters after their names (that's an advanced degree for you folks like me who don't have them). I would really like an expert witness (with a degree in statistics or perhaps even language studies) who makes the same obvious conclusions from this survey that any intelligent layman would but who can volunteer to get on the stand to refute the conclusions you know damn well the lofty NYU professor will draw when the Hearst Corp pays him boodles of money to be their expert witness.

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