Little did Raymond E. Stauffer realize that all hell would break loose when he noticed an expired patent number on a Brooks Brothers bowtie, reports Dionne Searcey in the Wall Street Journal (9/1/10). Raymond is a patent lawyer and he knows an outdated patent number when he sees one -- in the case of the Brooks Brothers adjustable bowtie, the patent had expired in the 1950s. It's illegal to use old patent numbers mainly because it's considered anti-competitive, given that the practice effectively discourages others from entering a market.

The fine is nominal, just $500 per violation. But after Raymond filed his bowtie suit against Brooks Brothers, a separate ruling found that companies are liable for $500 per item -- in other words, $500 for each and every individual Brooks Brothers bowtie (there are 120 different ties) carrying a false patent. This would add up to huge numbers not only for Brooks Brothers, but also companies including Procter & Gamble, Walmart, Cisco Systems, Merck and 3M, all of which apparently have products on the market with expired patent numbers on them.

Some defendants claim it's just an oversight: "A lot of these products always have patent numbers on them, and it never occurred to anyone to take them off," says an attorney representing Walmart. Others are dismissive: "These cases have forced companies to spend time, money and resources investigating claims where there really isn't any injury to anybody," says another defending attorney. But Daniel Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation feels quite differently about using expired patent numbers. "It chills competition, it misleads the public and takes away from the credit patent holders deserve," he says.

"I understand that advertising supports the internet, but I am a little spooked out," says Senator Claire McCaskill in a New York Times piece by Miguel Helft and Tanzina Vega (8/30/10). She adds: "This is creepy." The senator is among several lawmakers considering regulations on "remarketing," or the practice of tracking consumer behavior online to serve up targeted ads. Zappos is among the most enthusiastic proponents of the practice, but it appears that some backlash may be brewing.

If you've ever shopped at Zappos, you may have noticed that items you viewed but didn't purchase show up in ads on sites -- YouTube, Facebook or MySpace -- that you subsequently visit. "It's a pretty clever marketing tool," says Julie Matlin, who found herself being followed around by a pair of shoes she had viewed on Zappos. "But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on." Julie was even more chagrined when she found out she was being followed by ads for a dieting service.

Aaron Magness of Zappos says that's why each ad has a link to an explanation for it along with an opt-out option (which few apparently take advantage of). However, Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School says that simply telling people what's going on isn't enough. "When you begin to give people a sense of how this is happening, they don't like it," he says. And Alan Pearlstein of Cross Pixel Media, suggests it's overkill and thinks the approach could be more subtle by featuring general coupons versus specific items, for example. "What is the benefit of freaking customers out?" he says.

Archie may be 68 years old but his creators see nothing but potential in him among today's teens, reports George Gene Gustines in the New York Times (8/15/10). "I think there's been periods when you can tell that Archie comics had been written by men in their 50s," says Mark Evanier, a comic book historian. That period ended last year, when a new administration took over and began introducing storylines hinting at bigamy and characters who are out of the closet. This created buzz, and the buzz created sales.

At its peak, in the 1940s, a single Archie comicbook would sell more than a million copies. At its nadir, the 2000s, it "averaged around 2,455 copies." But the bigamy storyline (in which Archie imagines being married to both Veronica and Betty) sold 60,000, and now the comic averages about 5,000 copies per issue. Part of the success is owed to a different format -- a larger, "magazine-size publication that is part comic book, part 'Teen Beat.'" The approach played well with retailers, including CVS, Walmart, Target, Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble.

"I hate to denigrate comic book stores," says Michael Uslan, also a comic book historian. "They are wonderful, but for a kid to buy an Archie comic or for a parent to buy an Archie comic for a kid, they are not going to go to a walk-up in a bad part of town." The Archie empire is currently run by Jon Goldwater and Nancy Silberkleit, whose father and father-in-law, respectively, founded Archie comics. They envision everything from Archie apps to apparel to Broadway musicals to using Archie to promote literacy. "We're at the beginning of the beginning," says Jon. "Publishing will always be part of it, but we must morph into a multimedia company."

He's 77 years old now and the song that made him famous turns 55 next month, but Little Richard's influence still runs strong, reports Marc Myers in the Wall Street Journal (8/10/10). "I was like the rappers today, creating dirty words to blues songs on the spot," says Richard. "One of them was called Tutti Fruitti." (video) Indeed it was, and even though the original lyrics were cleaned up, teens at the time knew exactly what he meant when he sang "about a girl named Sue who knows just what to do." Woooooo.

Released in January, 1956, Tutti Frutti peaked at No. 17. It was followed by Long Tall Sally (No. 6), and Slippin' and Slidin', Rip It Up and Ready Teddy -- Little Richard recorded "15 Billboard Top 100 hits by 1958. He also made three film appearances, including The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield (video). "I had started standing at the keyboard so I could do my stage routine without having to get up," says Richard. "I also began putting my leg up on the piano, like Otis Turner." (video)

Richard was already dressing flamboyantly and wearing his hair in a pompadour, a style he picked up from Esquerita, the R&B singer who also taught him how to play boogie-woogie piano. "I wore makeup and wild outfits to keep white people from focusing on me as some kind of a ... threat," says Richard. "I knew that if I looked crazy, not cool, I wouldn't be seen that way. And it worked. People focused on the music." The affected include Elvis, the Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson. "I should be better recognized today for sure," says Richard. "I am the beginning. I am the originator."

"Elvis was complicated, so you need a lot of time to make sense of him," says Jim Hamilton in a Wall Street Journal piece by Marc Myers (8/18/10). Jim is one of some 40,000 fans who descended on Memphis to celebrate Elvis Week, commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the singer's death. Jim drove his 1959 Pink Cadillac all the way from Baltimore to be near Graceland on August 16th, which he's done every year for the past 15.

June Balish has attended Elvis Week for the past 14 years, although she admits she's not sure exactly why. "Elvis is infinitely mysterious," she says. Barbara McLean, also attending Elvis week for the 15th time, agrees: "No matter how big you think Elvis is, he always turns out to be even bigger," she says. "Every year, I think I've finally figured it all out, but I haven't. He just keeps growing on you." It's true that Elvis, in his 23-year career, "delivered an almost kaleidoscopic range of stage personalities."

He was a rocker, a film star, a balladeer ... a pawn and a king. His persona ranged "from aw-shucks innocent to pill-dependent recluse." But whatever he was, he's still making money. Warner just re-issued "Elvis on Tour," a 1972 documentary, and RCA/Legacy is about to release a 30-CD box set priced at $749. "He's the only star who touches your mind, heart and secksuality all at once -- and you never really fully figure out why," says June Balish. Mitchell Johnson, an Elvis impersonator, thinks he knows: "Down here, Southern hospitality has become a tourist attraction," he says, adding, "Elvis is just the soundtrack."

Certain city cafes are getting rid of the comfy chairs and tables in hopes of getting rid of some of their customers, suggests Oliver Strand in the New York Times (8/25/10). Among them is the aptly named Cafe Grumpy, whose latest location features "a counter in the back and a chest-high table in the front." If you want to linger, there's a bench outside. The idea is to discourage people from parking themselves with their laptops -- a practice that Grumpy had already banned at one of its other locations.

"I appreciate the idea of when you go someplace and it feels like a home away from home, but I don't think it should be a home office away from home," says Grumpy co-owner Caroline Bell. Some customers aren't happy about this. "I don't find it relaxing," says Kate Sebbah. "This is a time to sit down, relax, compose my thoughts." But others -- espresso drinkers especially -- like the stand-up approach. "I spent a semester in Rome when I was in college and coffee there is: you come in, you pay, you get it, you drink it, you slam it and you're out the door," says Matthew Schnepf.

Christian Geckeler, of manseekingcoffee dot-com, says less furniture is conducive to more conversation. "It's really lovely," he says. "You have a couple of bar stools and the baristas are right there, so the conversation just naturally happens." Mark Connell of the Bluebird Coffee Shop agrees: "A coffee shop should be a place to meet your friends and hold conversations ... instead of sticking your head in a laptop," he says. Starbucks in SoHo (image) meanwhile is hedging its bets with "a few stools, in addition to the expected tables and chairs."

Fred Taylor Jr. is not officially the "chief apology officer" for Southwest Airlines, but he might as well be, reports Terry Maxon via McClatchy/Tribune News (8/24/10). Fred, along with two assistants, sends brief emails of apology to passengers when something goes wrong. Usually it's relatively routine stuff, like delays. But sometimes it's kind of crazy, like the time a female passenger started chewing on a seat cushion, and then doffed her top and ran down the aisle.

In such cases, Fred's apology goes something like this: "On behalf of Southwest Airlines employees, I extend my apologies for any disconcerting feelings you may have had as a result of the bizarre behavior or one of your fellow travelers. Certainly, your patience and cooperation while the local authorities responded to the situation and conducted their respective investigation is greatly appreciated -- I imagine the wait was a bit of a hassle as well, and I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

Such apologies are normally sent within 24 hours of the incident, and are accompanied by some kind of gift, "usually a voucher in dollars that can be used on their next Southwest flight." Southwest has been apologizing like this for 10 years and it helps. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, "American, Northwest Airlines, US Airways and United Airlines all have complaint rates more than five times as high as Southwest's," which has the industry's lowest complaint rate. Delta's is more than nine times higher than Southwest's.

Frito-Lay is making more noise than it would like with its newly biodegradable bag of solar-baked chips, reports Suzanne Vranica in the Wall Street Journal (8/19/10). Frito might have expected nothing but praise for its new bag design for its Sun Chips brand (commercial). After all, the estimated life-span of a traditional snack-chip bag, which is made of "polymers such as polyproylene and polyethylene," could be as long as 100 years.

But the new Sun Chips bag, which was introduced in January, is made of polylactic acid, "which fully decomposes in about 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active, compost pile." The only problem with this is that the new bag is really, really noisy. It is so noisy that J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, tested its loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded it at 95 decibels (video). That compares to 77 decibels for an environmentally-unfriendly bag.

Indeed, Frito's new bag is so noisy that there's even a Facebook group called, "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This Sun Chips Bag," with more than 30,000 fans. The real issue is that the noisy bag may be hurting Sun Chips sales, which have been in decline since its introduction. But Frito is not backing off, and is now posting at-shelf signs reading, "Yes, the bag is loud, that's what change sounds like." However, a Frito engineer admits he's working on developing a quieter, crunch-free, biodegradable chips bag.

"The perfect bike is one where every part is exactly where it belongs," says Max Schaaf, a builder of skater-inspired motorcycles, reports Austin Considine in the New York Times (7/18/10). Max runs 4Q Conditioning, a custom-bike shop in Oakland, California, and is "widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in skateboarding and custom bike building." The prevailing aesthetic is "minimalism: Every visible part seems to have an equally visible function; the pieces are as gorgeous and meditative as they are spare and athletic."

In other words, they are not "chrome cruisers with stretched-out front ends and high-rise handlebars ... These are sleek stripped-down machines, recalling a style, popular after World War II, in which owners chopped away excess to make their bikes leaner and faster ... Typical design features of the genre include custom handlebars, fenderless front wheels, suspensions shorn of all extraneous brackets and no-frills seating for just one person."

One thing these skater-bikes have in common with other choppers is a disdain for unmodified bikes. "Stock Harleys are boring," says Lee Bender, a skater turned biker. "It's kind of like going to Walmart and buying a skateboard," he says. Harley embraces these skaters, though, and "is using star skateboarders to promote a new variation of its Sportster model." The skaters themselves recognize "an overlap of skater and biker subcultures." As Max Schaaf puts it: "We're just wired a certain way ... For some reason the death and danger are just a part of us."

If an indie band hits number-one on the charts, is it still an indie band? That's the question some fans have now that Arcade Fire, a bastion of indie-bandedness, has sold more records in a week than Eminem, writes Ben Sisario in the New York Times (8/15/10). Nevermind that being number-one on the charts today means having sold just 156,000 copies, "a quantity that might not have been enough for the top 10 a decade ago," much less in 1992, when alt-rockers Nirvana topped corp-popstar Michael Jackson.

But number one is still number one, even if it isn't what it used to be, and Arcade Fire is celebrating with two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. They got there, some say, through shameless self-promotion on Facebook, paid promotion on Twitter and a $3.99 download special on their new record, "The Suburbs," on Amazon. As one fan tweeted: "Corporate indie, anyone?" It seems that the music itself hardly matters anymore.

Nor does it seem to register that every other band of any size or stripe has to promote itself to realize anything like success. As Ben writes, "What separates Arcade Fire from most others isn't the band's tactics; it's that those tactics have worked." And it's worth noting that, unlike most other number-one acts who "turn over their rights to a record label," Arcade Fire retains the rights to its songs, which arguably meets the definition of "independent." And yet the only saving grace may be that, this week, Eminem is expected to re-claim his spot on Billboard's Hot 200.