THE IP PARK

The Bandstand · Alright, Alright, Alright™

1993 - word mark 2018, sound & motion marks 2025

For thirty years, 'alright, alright, alright' was a line from a 1993 stoner comedy. It has been a registered word mark since 2018. Across 2025 it became something rarer: a registered sound, and a registered piece of movement.

Matthew McConaughey's legal team secured eight non-traditional registrations at the USPTO: four sound marks and four motion marks, filed in December 2023 and issued through 2025, the last of them that December. Stack those on the 2018 word mark and the same three words end up protected three different ways: the phrase as a wordmark, the audio as a sound mark (with the registration certificate going so far as to describe the pitch contour of each syllable) and the performance itself as a motion mark.

Right of publicity is the obvious tool for celebrities worried about AI clones, and it's often the wrong tool: it varies state by state, it's slow, and large chunks of generative misuse don't fit neatly inside it. Trademark law, however, is federal, faster on injunctions, and built around the question of whether the public is being misled about source. Reframing a deepfake as a counterfeit rather than a privacy tort is much more effective.

A motion mark on McConaughey delivering the line means an AI-generated video imitating that delivery is potentially infringing a registered mark, not merely impersonating him.

The marks are held by J.K. Livin Brands, the same entity behind his apparel business. That keeps things neat: an identity attached to a commercial vehicle that trademark law already knows how to protect.

The moral: Identity used to be something you had. Now it's something you file.

The Ice-Cream Cart · Umbrella v. Noodles

Resident Evil Requiem, 2026

A fictional bioweapons company accusing a real noodle company of IP infringement was not on our 2026 bingo card, and yet here we are.

To promote Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom had the Umbrella Corporation 'sue' Nissin over alleged infringement of 'Umbrella Noodles,' a long-running in-game Easter egg riffing on Cup Noodle.

The joke lands because the audience already understands the legal architecture: distinctive branding, lookalike packaging, rights ownership, and the ever-reliable specter of confusion. In other words, this is mock IP enforcement doing very real commercial work.

There is a broader point here for brand owners and their advisers: intellectual property is no longer just a protective framework sitting quietly in the background. In the right hands, it is narrative material. It can signal value, create recognition, and, apparently, help sell a survival-horror launch.

The moral: Not every infringement claim should become a campaign. But every good campaign understands what makes IP memorable.

The Carousel · The Gravitational-Wave Power Plant

US 12,166,436 · filed 2023 - in force until 2043

There is a live US patent, in force until 2043 (fees permitting), whose stated power sources are the sun and sedentary supermassive black holes. US 12,166,436, 'System for producing high-intensity electricity utilizing gravitational waves.' Filed February 2023, granted December 2024.

Claim 1: a first quantum antenna 'configured to capture gravitational waves, carrying the potential energy of the sun,' a second 'carrying the potential energy from sedentary supermassive black holes,' a 'plasma collision roundabout' where the two are collided to foster the fusion of atoms, a separate 'wave collision roundabout' to merge them into a fusion wave, converters that 'transform the intensity of the produced electric power from Watt to Volts,' and a battery.

All five inventors are listed at Saint-Genis-Pouilly, the French commune with the LHC ring running underneath it.

Somewhere between a Dyson sphere and a mini-roundabout.

The moral: Please stop harvesting gravitational waves without a licence.

The Chess Tables · Harvest Now, Decrypt Later

today - Q-day

Some of the world's best-kept trade secrets have already been stolen. The thieves just can't read them yet, because they're waiting on a computer.

The strategy is called 'harvest now, decrypt later': steal encrypted data today, bet that a future quantum computer will open it. Which is a direct hit on the trade secret's entire sales pitch: patents give you twenty years, secrecy gives you forever.

If your secret has a long shelf life (a formula, a process, a client list you'll still care about in fifteen years), the theft has arguably already happened. The reading comes later.

It's worth being precise about what's actually at risk. Paper in a vault is safe; there's nothing to decrypt. It's the digital version (the same secret emailed, synced, and backed up behind today's encryption) that's living on borrowed time. Which, these days, is nearly all of it.

Here's where it stops being an IT problem and starts being a legal one: trade secret law only protects information you've taken reasonable measures to keep secret. Post-quantum encryption standards exist and adoption is accelerating. At some point, 'we encrypted it' stops counting as reasonable if everyone knows that encryption is on track to be broken. And the day you're in court arguing someone stole your secret, that's the first question the other side asks: what were you actually doing to protect it?

The moral: Migrating your encryption is no longer an IT decision: it's whether 'forever' survives contact with a quantum computer.

Reserved benches

Ten spots in the park are built but not yet written. They are drawn as empty on purpose, and we would rather admit that than pad the place out. Each one is a story coming soon:

• The Sandbox (story coming soon)
• The Fountain (story coming soon)
• The Picnic Spot (story coming soon)
• The News Kiosk (story coming soon)
• The Swings (story coming soon)
• The Statue (story coming soon)
• The Graffiti Wall (story coming soon)
• The Rose Garden (story coming soon)
• The Tennis Lawn (story coming soon)
• The Duck Pond (story coming soon)

Got one that belongs on a bench? The Collaborate page explains how to send it.