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No. What’s Your Problem?
The Wall Street Journal Blog brings us an interesting legal story, concerning the hit David E. Kelley show, “Boston Legal,” which, I’d argue, is Kelley’s best show since “Picket Fences.” It concerns a lawsuit brought against the show by Carolyn Arnold, the creator of a local cable show in New York. Arnold asserted that a fictional ad campaign brought by the television show’s fictional law firm, Crane, Pool, and Schmidt, infringed her trademark of the phrase,” “What’s your problem?” The premise of Arnold’s show, apparently, is that she approaches strangers on the street and asks, “What’s your problem?”
A Manhattan federal judge tossed the lawsuit, however, writing that the term, “What’s Your Problem?” was a generic descriptive term and had not gained any secondary meaning associated with Arnold’s show. I think if Arnold had actually wanted to create secondary meaning in the phrase, she’d have to amend it as such: “What’s your problem, buddy?”
