The Wall Street Journal has a beef with the Small Street Journal . The paper, which debuted in June, comes out monthly and is distributed free around the county and its environs from the back of the publishers' 1986 Oldsmobile Regency. They drop it off at children's hospital wards, schools, libraries, businesses and residences in 35 to 40 area towns. Circulation has grown to 6,000.
Revenue comes from advertising, which has also grown, but the paper has yet to make a profit.
The Oct. 6 letter to Reed was one of those boilerplate missives big companies send out when one of the computer databases they subscribe to spits out news that someone is trying to register a trademark which bears some similarity to their own. Small Street Journal , which is only 6 months old, had just registered with the state of Maine. In this instance, however, we simply fail to see any likelihood of confusion, or even likelihood of dilution, to the detriment of The Wall Street Journal . News stories about the tempest soon appeared in the Bangor and Portland papers. The Wall Street Journal smarted over being painted as the heavy.