Round 2 in Fox vs. Franken

Oral arguments have been scheduled for Friday for the Fox News Channel’s lawsuit against humorist Al Franken.

Last week, Fox sued the former “Saturday Night Live” performer and his publisher, the Penguin Group, to stop them from including “fair and balanced” in the title of his upcoming book.

The trademark infringement lawsuit seeks to force Penguin to rename “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” It also asks for unspecified damages.

Fox registered “Fair & Balanced” as a trademark in 1998.

So far, the legal action has only helped sell the book, which for the past week has been in the top 10 on Amazon.com. Penguin originally planned a print run of 250,000 but announced Monday that it had ordered an additional 40,000 copies.

Penguin also moved up the publication date from Sept. 22 to the end of this week, meaning books will likely be on sale by the time of Friday’s hearing.