The James Logan Courier

By Gene Trainor
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

FORT WORTH, Texas — When Carter Schimpff enrolled at Texas Christian University four years ago, he began work on what he thought was a marketable degree: a bachelor of business administration with a major in finance and a minor in real estate. At the time, housing markets were booming, and millions of dollars were being made in the investment and mortgage industries.

By Bruce Newman
San Jose Mercury News (MCT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. &8212; It took more than 30 years for the creators of Pez candy dispensers to give the little plastic figurines feet, and they never did get hands. But now the long arm of the Pez Candy Co. has reached all the way from Linz, Austria, into U.S. District Court, where it has slapped the tiny faces that fill the Museum of Pez Memorabilia with a lawsuit.

The legal broadside, which was filed in San Francisco last month, singles out a 7-foot-10 snowman, built especially for the Burlingame, Calif., museum, that has been recognized by the Guinness record keepers as the world's largest Pez dispenser. Pez seeks to have the snowman melted down.

And, says the museum's newly hired lawyer, the company is demanding that the museum's "curators," Gary Doss and wife Nancy Yarbrough Doss, turn over all profits from the Pez shrine's 14 years in business.

"From a branding perspective, I think Pez should embrace the Dosses and the museum, instead of trying to attack them," said Rodger Cole, the Mountain View-based trademark attorney from Fenwick & West LLP.

Fat chance.