JOSH MARSHALL UPDATE: I got an email asking if I was going wobbly on the Talking Points question, in light of this post below. No. I’ll try to be clear about this: it’s not that the term “Talking Points Memo” is dreadfully unique. It’s that they’re using it for, basically, the very same thing for which Marshall has already established a reputation.

Thought experiment: “Post” is a pretty generic term as applied to newspapers, far predating a certain DC paper. If I published, say, the Knoxville Post it would just join a long line of papers named after mail. The identical name wouldn’t matter because it would be in a different market (kind of like Bill O’Reilly’s feature, which is on TV instead of the Web, isn’t competing with Marshall). But try publishing your very own “Washington Post” in Washington, and arguing that, well, there’s nothing distinctive about “Post” and, well, naturally it’s the “Washington Post” if you’re publishing it in Washington. Go ahead, try it. I dare you.

The Washington Post won’t sit still for that, trust me. But that’s basically what they’re doing: publishing the same kind of thing, with the same title, in the same neighborhood. I don’t blame Marshall for being P.O.’ed. If they don’t know about Marshall’s use of the term, then they don’t deserve to be publishing a political weblog. If they do know, then they’re just trying to muscle in (and they’d never try to do the same thing to a traditional media feature with the same name). Either way, they ought to be embarrassed.

UPDATE: Shouting ‘Cross the Potomac notes that Terry Neal’s column ran today and isn’t called “Talking Points.” Could this be victory for Marshall? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure it’s the same feature, though it looks kind of bloglike.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No such luck. The feature referred to above is from the print edition. A separate online feature is still called Talking Points.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Hendry writes:

I seem to recall that sometime in the last 20 years, the Post sued a restaurant in the west for calling itself the Washington Post (hitching post, that is). The menus used the same fonts as the newspaper. I also recall that the Post succeeded in forcing the restaurant to change its name.

Wouldn’t surprise me.

PROBABLY THE LAST UPDATE: Reader Tim Hartin writes:

Yup. Happened here in Madison, Wisconsin, I think around 6 years ago. I don’t know about the menus, but the restaurant was on Washington street, and used a “newspapery” Olde Englishe font for its name (don’t know if it was the same font as the Post uses, but it was similar).

And this was for a frickin’ restaurant.

Also, another reader writes that O’Reilly’s TV feature is reprinted (repixeled?) on the Web under the “Talking Points” rubric. That’s news to me (hey, I just write for the Fox website, why should I know anything?). But, while I admit that makes it closer, the O’Reilly feature is still basically a TV feature that happens to be echoed on the website. It’s not nearly as much of a direct competitor as the Post’s feature.

But not to worry. In case Marshall doesn’t like the Post using his site’s name, he can always change it. Maybe to “The Federal Page.”