Intellectual Property Law

The CDA “content” divide

Posted on November 22, 2009
Originally posted 2007-05-21 18:15:45. Republished by Blog Post PromoterWhen does an interactive website pass across the great divide of “content provider” versus “Internet service provider” under what’s left of the Communications Decency Act?  IP Law Chat reports about a Ninth Circuit case involving Roommates...

What a Croc!

Posted on November 22, 2009
I don’t report on every dumb trademark lawsuit, because the really goofy ones involving famous companies usually end up getting mainstream press and big-time blog attention as well as other bloggy sober analysis, so what do you need me for?  I just work my little sub-micro-niche with thankless dedication and motivated solely by a love [...

Lowenstein story

Posted on November 19, 2009
Originally posted 2007-05-09 12:43:25. Republished by Blog Post PromoterThis morning I attended a breakfast seminar on insurance issues relating to technology, two areas of my interest and practice, sponsored by Lowenstein Sandler PC, the great New Jersey law firm where I — after spending years as an “associate” — became a lawyer...

New trademark blog: Pittsburgh Trademark Lawyer

Posted on November 19, 2009
Daniel Corbett, who unlike some people does not merely have a sadly un-updated picture of his younger self but who is by all indications actually as terrifyingly youthful as the visual evidence suggests, has despite this seeming deficiency quite ably rolled out the Pittsburgh Trademark Lawyer blog...

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Reuters: Never mind.

Posted on November 17, 2009
Originally posted 2006-08-08 00:29:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter I am sure it was accurate, in some Ratherian sense … but it was fake, and the blogsphere did brilliantly what it does best: Caught it and called the fakers out. Kudos of a sort to Reuters for, unlike Dan and the People’s Commissariat of Propaganda [...

I Read Dead Peoples’ Email: UPDATE

Posted on November 17, 2009
Originally posted 2005-03-01 00:00:00. Republished by Blog Post PromoterRemember this item?  I wrote, regarding a family’s request for access to a serviceman’s email account after his death, as follows: I say that absent a specific compelling reason to get the email information — i...

Impolitico

Posted on September 17, 2009
I first read about the brouhaha over the Politico trademark claim against the College Politico blog on Instapundit: ED MORRISSEY: ?Who owns the word ?Politico??? The blogosphere has been very good to Politico, and I think they should bear in mind the ill-will they?re incurring as a result of their heavy-handed legal tactics...

Top ten list

Posted on September 15, 2009
Okay, it’s a little late to actually attend his talk — but then again, most of LOC readers don’t really get to Iowa Idaho that often.  Still, it’s worth clicking around Stephen Nipper’s ?Ten Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Copyrights and Trademarks” blog post (the post of the talk) (actually, not a post- [...

Where was Betsy’s Page?

Posted on September 15, 2009
We linked below to this item that has developed over the weekend — someone had swiped Betsy’s Page, one of the first blogs I advertised my law firm on when I first got involved in blogging. It was, to all appearances, just plain gone from Blogger, and no one — besides a few Internet [...

Likelihood of opposition

Posted on September 15, 2009
They’re having trouble assimilating the concept of worker Yao Ming in the People’s Republic of China. Of course most of us have trouble assimilating someone who’s 7′5″ (or so); all the more so in China, I suppose. Not that they haven’t tried...

We’re All Journalists Now

Posted on September 15, 2009
That’s what all we journalists have been saying. Scott Gant now lays it out in a new book by the same name. Originally posted 2007-05-17 16:39:44. Republished by Old Post Promoter

This is Not Censorship

Posted on September 15, 2009
Editor and Publisher reports about the canning (”resignation” following a “suspension”) of the tasteful gent who ran that front-page story that New Yorkers saw staring out of newspaper boxes: ?52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope? in the New York Press, “New York’s Premier Alternative Newspaper...

Disclaimer for the slow-witted, the vicious and the greedy

Posted on September 15, 2009
I have added a disclaimer to the right-side navigation bar as the winds of oppression howl about me. It’s preposterous to think that this is really necessary, but here we are. Originally posted 2007-01-02 00:33:26. Republished by Old Post Promoter

EU Not Soft on Patents

Posted on September 15, 2009
Matt Sheffield reports: Software Patents Rejected by EU. (Hat tip to Dean Esmay.) If you’ve read the blog before you know what I think about patents. But this is pretty newsorthy, and, as Sheffield notes, has very interesting micro- and macroeconomic implications...

Twisn’t it rich

Posted on September 14, 2009
Here is the latest roundup of topical re-tweets that were tweeted to followers @roncoleman in the last week or so: @gfiremark New William Patry book arrives — with a new blog!http://bit.ly/INHCK @eschaeff Lawyers tripped up online: “A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs...

Name that geek

Posted on September 14, 2009
Dennis Crouch of the Patently-O blog did a cool little experiment. A professor of law at Boston University and a practicing patent lawyer, he’d be the first to admit this is entirely awful demographic / sociological statistical technique, but it’s still pretty good cocktail party nosh: Name and contact-information is available for registered US patent [...

Reverse Trademark Dilution?

Posted on September 14, 2009
Trademark dilution is something that happens when you use my “famous” trademark in a way that, while not necessarily threatening likelihood of confusion — because everyone knows Microsoft doesn’t make skateboards or Coke doesn’t make hunting rifles — does threaten to “dilute” or lessen the ability of my trademark to denote a single source in [...

Commented on “The Trademark Blog”

Posted on September 10, 2009
Marty Schwimmer: IDEA v PETA (SDNY August 298 2009): Plaintiff, no doubt aware that statutory damages are only available for post-registration copyright infringements that are not part of a continuing, ongoing series of infringing acts of the same kind as those engaged by defendant prior to the effective date of registration, alleged in its amended complaint [...

Dumb bomb

Posted on September 10, 2009
Courthouse News Service picks up on a final ruling in a case that made everyone titter last fall: A Long Island man infringed on Pfizer’s trademark by towing a 20-foot replica missile with “Viva Viagra” painted on its side through midtown Manhattan, eventually parking it in front of the drugmaker’s 42nd Street headquarters, a federal [...

YouTube, other websites and the DMCA

Posted on September 10, 2009
Lee Gesmer at MassLawBlog explains why the hullaballoo about YouTube’s exposure to copyright liability is overstated. I agree with his analysis and have lots of other little thoughts about it, and you’d have read them in Variety if a wicked editor hadn’t cut them out before it went to press...

Trademark infringement: Just say no

Posted on September 10, 2009
Trademark litigators and enforcement people (especially in anticounterfeiting) frequently analogize to the War on Drugs. You can’t really ever stop the flow of fake Vuitton bags, but there’s supposedly some value in achieving token victories over the “kingpins...

The Trademark Blog: Opposition to “scandalous mark” opens some box

Posted on September 10, 2009
Marty Schwimmer chronicles and opines on the latest blip in the controversy regarding registration of a tasteless trademark, answering the musical question, What exactly is the speed limit on the road to perdition? Yes, I don’t agree with Marty on this one...

All wet

Posted on September 10, 2009
Wordlab has the latest on the surf wars. Originally posted 2007-04-20 13:23:34. Republished by Old Post Promoter

You can’t fool Mother Trademark

Posted on September 10, 2009
G. Mathew Lombard reviews an important article in the INTA Bulletin on the reemergence, or perhaps emergence in full for the first time, of viable claims for fraud on the PTO in trademark applications: Specifically, the article discusses the adoption of a new ?bright line? test for fraud on the USPTO...

An Army of Narcisusses

Posted on September 10, 2009
The anti-Glenn-Reynolds, represented in this article in the Weekly Standard: Just as Marx seduced a generation of European idealists with his fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the Web 2.0 cult of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley...

Loss of Faculties

Posted on September 10, 2009
This is off topic, but if you’re a law school graduate, you’ll appreciate my question. There’s a website written written by a far-left-wing law professor in Texas (he once mentioned one of our colleagues, obliquely, as one of his many enemies, but this is irrelevant to my point — in fact his credentials are mind-meltingly [...

Google and the Privacy Obsession

Posted on September 10, 2009
Google is the new horseman of the ever-approaching privacy apocalpyse, according to an article in Reuters. Why? Because Google lets you keep your mail (on its Gmail service) “forever,” though the article doesn’t explain what exactly the privacy risk is there...

Mix ‘n’ match

Posted on September 09, 2009
The thing about lawyer jokes — besides the fact that they’re never funny when you all of a sudden have to call one of us in the middle of the night — is that they don’t necessarily have to make any sense at all to be considered worthy of publication...

Not lovin’ it

Posted on September 09, 2009
McCrazy: Malaysia’s highest court ruled Tuesday against US fast food giant McDonald’s, which has waged an eight-year battle to prevent local eatery “McCurry” from using the prefix “Mc” in its name. . . . McDonald’s on Tuesday sought permission from the federal court to contest the appeals court decision, but judges denied the application and said the [...

Who owns the copyright in scans of public domain works?

Posted on September 09, 2009
I love Plan59.com. If you’re my age or a little older, almost any click on this smartly designed and comprehensive website can recreate a certain feeling that comes with recalling a much more secure, confident and simple America — kind of like the grown up version of Dick and Jane...

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