On March 24, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States held, in B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., Inc., that administrative proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office may have preclusive effect in trademark infringement suits before a district court. This decision represents a drastic … Read more
Terms of Use (TOU) are, in effect, a contract between the users and the provider of a website. In the “olden” days (like 1992!), when websites were static and information was simply transmitted from the provider to the user, there was no need to set out explicit terms for the interaction. Today, many websites are … Read more
Last month, I wrote about trademark profiteering, concluding that attempts to monetize rallying cries by registering them as trademarks almost always fail. The USPTO proved me correct this month, when it denied two separate applications to register marks associated with Eric Garner. Eric Garner died in New York last year as the result of an … Read more
Dolce & Gabanna is a famous Italian fashion house, founded thirty years ago by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. The company has been a significant player in the fashion industry for decades, dressing celebrities and operating almost 300 stores in 40 countries around the world. This weekend, singer Elton John called for a boycott of … Read more
I have previously discussed the Marvin Gaye and Robin Thicke/Pharrell Williams copyright dispute over the song “Blurred Lines”. Earlier this week, matters got considerably worse for the funk duo: a jury found that “Blurred Lines” was substantially similar to Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up,” and awarded Gaye’s estate $7.3 Million in damages. Although … Read more
Photographers are often disturbed to find that they are without a meaningful remedy when their work is infringed, because they didn’t register the copyright in their photographs. Infringement of a registered work would expose an infringer to statutory damages and attorneys’ fees, which is a lucrative proposition. Absent timely registration, though, a copyright owner is … Read more
Entrepreneurs often choose not to spend money on legal fees as they are launching their businesses. Understandably, budgets are tight in a company’s early days, and when faced with the choice of spending money on a trademark lawyer or on product development, product development usually (and with good reason) wins. This results in many individuals … Read more
Trademark Profiteering: Can LET’S ROLL, BOSTON STRONG, I CAN’T BREATHE and JE SUIS CHARLIE be registered as trademarks? Let’s Roll. Boston Strong. I Can’t Breathe. Je Suis Charlie. Besides being rallying cries for social movements in the wake of horrible tragedies, what do these phrases have in common? They were all the subjects of multiple … Read more
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the November Sony cyber attack, and that company’s decision to cancel the theatrical release of the film The Interview in response to anonymous terror threats believed to have originated in North Korea. At the time, Sony was widely criticized for submitting to the threats, and for … Read more
The fallout from a massive cyber attack on Sony in November escalated tremendously this week. After exposing embarrassing emails and confidential company information, stealing the screenplay for an upcoming James Bond movie, and posting five movies on illegal file sharing sites, the hackers next threatened to attack cinemas slated to show the film The Interview. … Read more
