THE O'REILLY FACTOR.(Fox News' suit agianst Al Franken)

"Where's the Beef? The Mad Cow Disease Conspiracy."?"Positive Discipline: Don't Leave Home Without It."?"The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life." These were among the more than a hundred book titles introduced in federal court at the end of last week as part of an amicus brief filed by the Authors Guild in defense of the comedian Al Franken and his publisher, Penguin, in this summer's most celebrated trademark infringement case, Fox News v. Franken.

It hardly seemed necessary, given that Fox's request for a preliminary injunction against Franken's new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," had been widely ridiculed for its legal shortcomings and tactical wrongheadedness. Fox's ostensible objection was to Franken's use of the phrase "fair and balanced" (a company-owned trademark since December, 1998) in his subtitle and of the Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly's face on the cover; supposedly, consumers might be deceived into thinking the book was Fox-friendly. But the language in the complaint--it characterized Franken as "increasingly unfunny,"?"shrill and unstable," and possibly even "deranged"--suggested that what Fox (or O'Reilly) really objected to was Al Franken himself. At any rate, the suit was a boon to the book, which shot up to No. 1 (from No. 489) on Amazon's best-seller list, and an embarrassment to Fox. On Friday afternoon, in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan, Judge Denny Chin listened with mounting impatience as Fox's counsel dutifully presented its oral argument, and then quickly ruled against the network: "There are hard cases and there are easy cases," Chin said. "This is an easy case, in my view, because it is wholly without merit, both factually and legally."

So what was Fox thinking? Old Hollywood hands ought to know. They might recognize, in the extravagance and folly of a flimsy lawsuit, the telltale signs of an ...