Nur Huda el-Wahabi CREDIT: Facebook

On the 14th of June, 2017, residents of London awakened to the horrific news that a raging inferno had engulfed a 24 story highrise in the middle of North Kensington. According to police reports 80 lives were lost in that tragedy. In a charity event to raise money for the surviving families, British author Philip Pullman has decided to name a character in his newest publication after one of the Grenfell Tower victims. Pullman raised £32,400 after teacher James Clements suggested the character should be named in memory of his former pupil Nur Huda el-Wahabi, who died in the tragedy.

The US Supreme Court ruled in June that disparaging words can receive trademark protection. It said rejecting disparaging trademarks violates the First Amendment, clearing the way for an Asian American rock group called the Slants to trademark its name – and for the Washington Redskins’ maligned moniker to stay protected as well. Now, two entrepreneurs offended by the n-word filed to trademark the epithet to keep it out of the hands of racists.

Steve Maynard, who also filed to trademark the Nazi swastika, said he wanted to quash hate by getting the rights to it. Will they succeed? Read on to find out what IP lawyers think of their chances.

Star bright, star bright, first star I see tonight…every wonder how all of those heavenly bodies receive their official name? The International Astronomical Union provides detailed information about the star names and naming – including a long list of list of IAU-approved star names.

Hint: don’t try this at home.

The cataloguing of stars has seen a long history. Since prehistory, cultures and civilizations all around the world have given their own unique names to the brightest and most prominent stars in the night sky. Certain names have remained little changed as they passed through Greek, Latin and Arabic cultures, and some are still in use today. As astronomy developed and advanced over the centuries, a need arose for a universal cataloguing system, whereby the brightest stars (and thus those most studied) were known by the same labels, regardless of the country or culture from which the astronomers came.

Once upon a time, Coca-Cola tried to rebrand their flagship drink by changing the recipe and calling it “New Coke”. If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember what a disaster this is; they quickly phased it out and we got back Classic Coke. Now Coke Zero – not to be confused with Diet Coke – has been renamed to Coke Zero Sugar. Why the change? This informative article by Alex Kelley of Catchword explains it all.

The state of Maine has been hit hard by the nation’s opioid addiction crisis. About every 24 hours, another state coroner declares that someone’s son or daughter died from a drug overdose. Given that frightening statistic and the family tragedies related to it, many Maine residents are outraged when they heard that a new bar in Portland would be named “Opium”. While the bar owners’ argue that they picked the name as a “metaphor for relaxing and having a happy time”, activists and family members who have lost someone to drugs say the name is in very poor taste. More on this controversy can be found in this article at the Portland Press Herald.

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Does your name match your face?

Researchers at Hebrew University examined a social tag that is associated with us early in life— given names. The hypothesis is that name stereotypes can be manifested in facial appearance, producing a face-name matching effect, whereby both a social perceiver and a computer are able to accurately match a person’s name to his or her face

According to a study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a person’s facial features actually become those we associate with their particular name. Using volunteers, researchers showed each person photos of different people and asked to guess that person’s name (from a list of five).

It turned out people were able to guess the correct name far more often than they would have done by chance. The random chance for getting it right is 20 percent; study participants nailed it a full 35 percent of the time – but only if they shared a culture. Read on to find how more and the implications of this work.

Civil rights leaders have called for a general boycott of the discount retailer Walmart for the use of an offensive product name listed on its website. On Walmart.com. a third-party seller posted a wig cap that reportedly comes in the color “N*****r Brown”. The company quickly removed the product posting from its site, but not before it had been spotted by countless shoppers. Although Walmart has issued a formal apology for that the advertisement it claimed was placed by a third party seller, activists and shop-goers remain incensed that one of the most offensive names in the US language had not been spotted and eliminated before appearing on the site.