Intellectual Property Law

Tweeting the tweets that twas

Posted on August 03, 2009
Last week’s notable and topical tweets and re-tweets on my Twitter feed: @blawgreview Duncan Bucknell’s IP Think Tank hosts BR222, a carnival ride down under. @piercelaw RT @gfiremark Court bars fair use def for Tenenbaum, huge blow; proposed defense ‘would swallow copyright’ @walterolson Sculptor of “Wall Street Bull” sculpture sues over book that used photo of it on [...

Oy, Tenenbaum

Posted on August 01, 2009
A while ago I wrote a little piece linking to Doug Lichtman’s exploration of the Tenenbaum copyright case, which Harvard law professor Charles Nesson said would be a “a public referendum not only on the music industry?s efforts to enforce copyright through these direct-infringer suits, but also on the copyright rules that make the industry litigation possible...

Steal your Face right off your head

Posted on July 31, 2009
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a blog post so well developed that I can’t rephrase it, riff on it or summarize it, so I have to steal it lock, stock and barrel.  And then it’s about someone who is maybe even cleverer than LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®! Well, here’s one of each of those, [...

Not in the good way

Posted on July 29, 2009
Ryan Gile reports about a case that deals with real trademark fraud, and that makes it matter: I have previously written (link here) about the ongoing dispute between Roy Tuccillo and Geisha NYC, LLC (?Geisha NYC?) over the restaurant name ?Japonais? (the ?JAPONAIS mark?)...

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Tweeting the week what was

Posted on July 27, 2009
As threatened in the previous post, and by way of rounding up blog posts and other items that should be of interest to LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® readers, here are those topically relevant and particularly interesting Twitter finds, and in some case original tweets, that I have not already elevated to a post from the last week [...

The LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® Twitter manifesto

Posted on July 27, 2009
The authors of many of the blogs I read that are topically related to this one now use Twitter.  So are a lot of other people, and mostly they seem to talk about Twitter. They not only fail to recognize this as a problem, but I have even seen evangelists point to it as [...

Google’s keyword policy shift has unsurprising effect

Posted on July 24, 2009
Lori Weiman of Search Engine Land reports: As you may know, Google recently loosened its policy in the USA related to the use of trademarks in ad copy text, which went into effect on June 15, 2009. The big question is: has this change resulted in an increase in trademark use? The answer is yes...

Bar none

Posted on July 22, 2009
Michael Atkins: [University of Washington] School of Law Professor Sean O?Connor, guest blogging at Legal Satyricon, writes about AT&T?s trademark registration of the bars indicating cell phone signal strength (depicted left). ?The bars are purely functional representations of the strength of cell service and a standardized one at that,? he writes...

No one Timesing this story?

Posted on July 21, 2009
The New York Times gets it… [T]he speed at which reputations are made and destroyed in the Internet age has changed the thinking about the danger of brand names? becoming verbs. Better to get the market share when you can and worry later, when the brand becomes part of the popular vernacular and less distinctive in [...

A quick scan of the law regarding copyright and the public domain images

Posted on July 20, 2009
The story’s all over the Net, but here’s as good a take on it as any, from Mike Masnick at Techdirt: Derrick Coetzee, a software developer and an administrator of Wikimedia Commons, the media repository for Wikipedia is being threatened by the National Portrait Gallery in London...

Goldman Sachs, those big losers!

Posted on July 17, 2009
Remember Mike Morgan, the flaky sort who dast challenge the mighty Men of Gold?   Now it over, and here’s how it all ends (via @walterolson): Mike Morgan, a Florida-based investment adviser who started the controversial blog GoldmanSachs666.com, has prevailed in a case he brought against the investment bank in April...

Gibson argues for brand on the merits

Posted on July 16, 2009
Since the beginning I’ve been blogging about the attempts by Gibson and Fender, the makers of fine guitars, to avoid copycat competition via the trademark and litigation route.  My most recent post on the progress of that campaign is here, where I wrote: I often explain to clients and prospective clients that the main reward for [...

Owning ratings

Posted on July 16, 2009
Eric Goldman: A Colorado judge has reached the remarkable conclusion that a hospital publicizing its star ratings and other recognition from a third party rating service in its marketing material might be committing copyright and trademark infringement...

Coming soon to a bridge under you

Posted on July 15, 2009
Patent Litigation Weekly has a fascinating article about what tangled webs we — well, not we, but patent lawyers — weave when they become, er, patent rights opportunity entrepreneurs — i.e., patent trolls.  In this case, you could call them inbred patent trolls...

Overlaywered, just-right-Blawg-Reviewed

Posted on July 13, 2009
Walter Olson hosts this week’s Blawg Review: Welcome to Blawg Review #220, rounding up some highlights of the past week from around the legal blogosphere. It?s my second time hosting it here at Overlawyered, a blog that as its name implies maintains a certain critical distance from many of the doings of the legal profession...

Fakers rising

Posted on July 10, 2009
Brandweek: Ersatz goods selling on Canal Street isn’t exactly news in New York, even though Mayor Mike Bloomberg staged an impressive photo op amid a mountain range of purses. But the size and stealth of the raid on what cops called “Counterfeit Triangle” seemed to verify a change that many in the brand community have sensed [...

“Excuse me while I kiss this guy”

Posted on July 09, 2009
Michael Atkins, that is.  Well, that’s what Hendrix always sounded to me to be saying in “Crosstown Traffic.” Anyway, Mike continues his dogged coverage of all things Hendrix-trademarky, and here’s the latest of it: Defendants? use of HENDRIX and JIMI HENDRIX was fair use of plaintiffs? trademarks to describe the images depicted on their products, the [...

Companies versus their fans

Posted on July 07, 2009
Walter Olson: The famous maker of candies and candy-dispensers is suing the owners of the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Northern California, claiming that its venture into Pez homage, which includes a Guinness-record largest replica of a Pez dispenser, infringe the firm?s trademarks and ?deceive the public into thinking that the museum is operating under [...

Liable to regret it

Posted on July 07, 2009
Instapundit: LIBEL SUITS AGAINST BLOGS HAVE BEEN IFFY ? I wrote an article on that a couple of years ago ? but Mickey Kaus?s discussion for some reason made me think of this New Yorker cartoon. Remember, just because ?actual malice? is a tough standard to meet doesn?t mean you aren?t in big trouble if someone [...

Prejudice in a good way?

Posted on July 06, 2009
Can a company name be “prejudicial”? My friend Rob Holmes — he of the purportedly prejudicially-monikered “IPCybercrime” firm — is, quite reasonably, going to finish his coffee rather than worry about that too much...

Dr. Yes

Posted on July 06, 2009
Just a scant day after I was using the mythical man from MI6’s movie mug to mock our former colonial overlords for their upperclass-twittery, comes the Telegraph of London to report that, unlike in these United States, perhaps there’s still a bit of that Anglo Saxon Magna Carta lust for freedom in ye olde English [...

Posted on July 05, 2009

Tens years of Overlawyering

Posted on July 03, 2009
Overlawyered turns 10.  Congratulations!  There was really blogging ten years ago? I didn’t miss the anniversary.  I just didn’t want to be accused of cadging for a link.

Holding Caulfield

Posted on July 02, 2009
I could have linked to a million stories on this, but Publishers Weekly seems appropriate: In a potentially precedent-setting ruling today, federal judge Deborah Batts ruled that J.D. Salinger?s most famous character, Holden Caulfield, is protected by copyright...

Copywrong

Posted on July 01, 2009
David Post discusses Judge Richard Posner’s musings on the pretty hopeless prospects of the newspaper biz: [I]f “the newspaper” as a business model fails (because of competition from the free content available on the Net), who will invest the resources required for adequate news-gathering services in the first place? ...

Royal mess

Posted on June 29, 2009
Burger King’s trademark place is kind of funny.   If you Google His Majesty’s Monicker along with the word TRADEMARK, you get this link, which not only asserts, naturally, his royal BURGER KING® registered mark, but the far more dubious BK® mark down at the bottom, yet not at all (on that page) the ancient [...

He just bought it like that

Posted on June 29, 2009
Impulse buying, King of Pop style: Branca had a surprise for Jackson. The attorney said casually, ?By the way, the ATV catalogue is available.? Jackson looked puzzled. Branca added teasingly, ?It includes a few things you might be interested in.? ?Like what?? Jackson asked...

Come, lettuce reason together

Posted on June 26, 2009
Leafy, green and non-infringing. Real judicial fiber here — cleans the whole system out, right down the line. Via @EricGoldman, by way of TechDirt.

When you’re a hammer

Posted on June 26, 2009
The whole world is a nail. Now Marty Schwimmer isn’t a hammer, because he does trademarks and not patents, see.  So this post connecting Michael Jackson and intellectual property is not proof that Michael Jackson’s death is a nail! (Single-glove-tip on the actual patent to Andie Schwartz!)

All true

Posted on June 23, 2009
Ruling Imagination: I may be a minority, but I find it odd to think a literary character, rather than the work he appears in, can be copyrighted. Nonetheless, the judge hearing J.D. Salinger?s lawsuit seeking to block publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye apparently thinks Holden Caulfield is ?a portrait by words...

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