Intellectual Property Law

Kudos to Doctorow

Posted on June 04, 2008
Mr. Boing-Boing himself is rewriting the rules about creativity, copyright and keysh: Remember four weeks ago when I told you that my young adult novel Little Brother made the New York Times bestseller list? Well, I’ve just heard from my publisher that it’s about to go into its fourth week on the list, having climbed to [...

UDRP decisions firm up on gripe sites

Posted on June 04, 2008
Greg Beck reports about a UDRP decision regarding a complaint filed by California’s Metrolink system over the domain name Metrolinkrider.com, a gripe site dedicated to… California’s Metrolink system: Noting a split in past decisions on the issue, the panel held that noncommercial use of a trademark in a domain name for purposes of comment or criticism [...

New quicklinks from Goldman

Posted on June 03, 2008
Know what’s going on — the latest developments in trademark and domain name jurisprudence. Right here at Eric Goldman’s place! I was particularly intrigued by this: * NYT: Can a Dead Brand Live Again? This article discusses the development of a secondary market for well-recognized but defunct brands...

Eric E. Johnson, “The Backbencher”

Posted on June 02, 2008
This guy’s good.

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Baseball whiffs

Posted on June 02, 2008
You’re outta here! Major League Baseball and the players association struck out on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their appeal of a ruling that sided with a company that uses player statistics for fantasy baseball. The high court declined to hear the appeal of a lower-court ruling that a St...

Zombie on zombie action

Posted on May 30, 2008
The Escapist (via Punning Pundit): In a battle that refuses to die, publisher Capcom filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the Dawn of the Dead film owners as part of a dispute over patenting zombie action. Capcom requested a declaratory judgment against MKR productions, because, according to a Hollywood Repoter blog, it expects MKR to file a lawsuit [...

Magistrates malign magenta monopoly

Posted on May 30, 2008
We reported earlier about T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom’s attempts to assert rather far-flung trademarks rights over the color magenta.  Now it appears that at least one tribunal has declined to see the world with those-colored glasses, as Engadget reports: Well, would you look at that — our good friend Deutsche Telekom seems to have lost [...

Blawg searchin’

Posted on May 28, 2008
The ABA Journal, my alma mater (and immensely cooler than when I used to haunt its halls), announces that its site now has a new “blawg search” function. Indeed, right at the top of the site, there’s a search bar that gives automatically gives you results for the site and for the blawgs the [...

When worlds collide

Posted on May 27, 2008
You can read about it anywhere.  I’ll just give you one link — David Lat: Google vows not to settle [its case with Viacom], saying it will take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. Let the law firms rejoice! And there was much rejoicing!

Birthday Marty

Posted on May 27, 2008
John Welch: Marty Schwimmer’s Trademark Blog turns six years old this month. Marty is the grandfather of trademark blogging. I’m not sure who the grandmother is. Well, I didn’t even know six years was three generations in trademark blogging years! Is that like Moore’s Law for niche blogging? (Kind of an ironic statement, though, for [...

Likelihood of Reciprocation

Posted on May 26, 2008
Our “blogroll” policy has not really changed, even though LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® is bigger and better than ever, but it may be useful to clarify it, because we do get inquiries, and there have been some refinements that I just made up. And this blog is now “big” enough in our micro-sub-niche that it is [...

Kissing trademark rights goodbye?

Posted on May 25, 2008
Eric Johnson’s Pixelization blog has a sweet insight into a sticky trademark mess that Hershey’s could be, theoretically, getting itself into: It’s a Hershey’s-brand three-compartment silicone muffin pan. When you bake muffins in this pan, they come out - adorably, of course - in the shape of oversized Hershey’s chocolate bars - complete with the Hershey’s [...

Ten questions on trademark application “fraud”

Posted on May 25, 2008
John Welch asks ten questions about the state of the law on so-called “fraud’ on the Trademark Commissioner, i.e., the type that invalidates a trademark.  This is “fraud” of the type that most people in most walks of life, including lawyers, would call… a mistake.

Online retailing and initial interest confusion

Posted on May 21, 2008
We reported earlier on a related case in this area implicating the use of trademarks to sell merchandise online via “unauthorized distributors.” A new decision in this area was issued yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona...

A Wolf by any other name

Posted on May 20, 2008
When you think of the juxtaposition of restaurants you probably can’t afford to eat in and men whose name should remind you of Mozart but really make you think of sprouting hair all over your body when the moon is full, okay… only one person comes to mind, right? Right?

The words they own

Posted on May 19, 2008
There’s a learned (of course) discussion of copyright and free speech going on at Volokh. (Hat tip to Above the Law.) Says Neil Netanel: Courts have recognized that copyright can abridge speech, but they have almost never actually imposed First Amendment limitations on copyright...

One down, four to go!

Posted on May 15, 2008
Five more years until incontestability for the bestest trademark registration ever!

American Red Cross lands right cross against J&J

Posted on May 15, 2008
Johnson & Johnson started it. The Red Cross wins it: A federal judge last night ruled against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in its suit to stop the American Red Cross from using the Red Cross emblem on first aid and other health and safety products sold to the public...

Judicial circuitry

Posted on May 14, 2008
This colorful map showing which states fall into which federal judicial circuits is just plain a handy thing to have around.  I am sure that, properly matted and framed, it will also make a fine gift this upcoming Father’s Day! Pinning this up near the phone just could make Pop sound pretty smart one of these [...

“Tolerated use”

Posted on May 14, 2008
Tim Wu (via Glenn Reynolds) says that we have to deal with the fuzzy logic of copyright enforcement in order properly to understand how copyright is, and perhaps should be, realistically enforced: “Tolerated use” is a term that refers to the contemporary spread of technically infringing, but nonetheless tolerated use of copyrighted works...

Domain names only, please — if that

Posted on May 14, 2008
When is a UDRP claim more, and less, than a UDRP claim?  William Morris reports: The Panel spent considerable effort recounting the facts and allegations between the parties, which involved multiple cease-and-desist letters, offers to sell the disputed domains, filing of trademark infringement complaints with the concerned registrars, and a pending petition before the TTAB to [...

Give it a rest!

Posted on May 12, 2008
John Welch reports on a case involving the would-be registration for IRESTMYCASE.COM, an attorney’s website, wherein the TTAB reminds us that a URL (website address) alone does not constitute a trademark.

Creative license

Posted on May 11, 2008
David Donoghue reports on an interesting copyright issue blowing around Chicago, my home away from home: The Chicago Tribune’s Ameet Sachdev reported that an ongoing copyright dispute may be coming to a head at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street in Chicago, click here for the Tribune article...

Adidas v. Payless

Posted on May 10, 2008
ADIDAS, right? All Day I Dream About Susan Scafidi’s definitive analysis and writeup of this hot case! (Okay, Karla?!)

Goldman’s quick links

Posted on May 08, 2008
Get the big picture — Eric Goldman’s roundup on technology and marketing law developments for April.

The long and rocky road

Posted on May 07, 2008
Irvin Robbins, the co-founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, died yesterday. Here’s how much time has passed since just about the time your blogger was born, in ice cream marketing years: When the Beatles were to arrive in the United States in 1964, a reporter called to ask whether Baskin-Robbins was going to commemorate [...

UDRP Blog

Posted on May 07, 2008
The world needs more better blogging! So welcome, good luck and Godspeed to the youthful but wise William J. Morris, III, of Saunders & Silverstein in Newburyport, Massachusetts, evidently a master of his domain, who launched his new UDRP Blog last month!

Patent this

Posted on May 07, 2008
Business method patents! I must get a call about patenting a “business method” once a month. And I’m not even a patent lawyer. And, as a not one of those guys, I often wonder — mostly when trying desperately to fall asleep on a day packed with action, adventure and stimulation such [...

All that know-chow costs some scratch!

Posted on May 07, 2008
Legal Blog Watch: Pet food giant Purina is like a dog that won’t give up its bone — or in this case, its chow. Three years ago, Purina sent a cease-and-desist letter to Chow, Baby!, a Baltimore area pet supply shop and Web site owned by Robin McDonald, asserting that its use of the [...

There’s NoSpace like home

Posted on May 05, 2008
At least for MySpace.com, which has lost a key domain name battle in England. According to Bell Denning, solicitors for the respondent: Both the first and the appeal decisions held that the vast majority of MySpace?s claims had no merit ? not least because the UK ISP had legitimately registered the name some 6 years [...

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