Intellectual Property Law

Ten Commandments Achieve Creche Status

Posted on November 18, 2010
Originally posted 2005-06-27 12:41:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter We’ve been patiently waiting for this one, and the decision is out, and evidently it’s a doozy! Court Splits on Ten Commandments Displays Says the story: [T]he high court said that displays of the Ten Commandments–like their own courtroom frieze–are not inherently unconstitutional...

Litigation is war!

Posted on November 16, 2010
Old Passaic County courthouse With apologies to Fred Whitmer… great day today, going in person to file a verified complaint in a commercial case in New Jersey Superior Court.  If you’ve never waddled up to the clerk’s counter and handed over your papers to a human person and watched that pleading get stamped, well, it’s [...

Lawyer: Apple trademark claim “silly”

Posted on November 16, 2010
Originally posted 2006-04-03 09:27:30. Republished by Blog Post PromoterCNN.com reports: A lawyer for Apple Computer Inc. on Thursday dismissed as ridiculous a long-running trademark infringement claim by The Beatles’ Apple Corps record label that has landed the two cultural icons in Britain’s High Court...

Get a gripe

Posted on November 16, 2010
Originally posted 2007-09-19 16:46:04. Republished by Blog Post PromoterTom Crandall considers “When A Gripe Site Is Manipulated By A Competitor” — and gets a crack expert opinion in there. Says Tom: I believe we are entering a very dark period of the web, folks...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

COICA: Big IP supersizes it

Posted on November 15, 2010
Everything I’ve written about here for the last five years, or just about everything, is about to get a lot worse, explains David Post: Congress is set to once again consider the Sen Leahy?s Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeit Act, a truly awful bill (with the appropriately awful acronym ?COICA? ...

Bring your discomfort bag (revised and expanded)

Posted on November 15, 2010
Originally posted 2007-01-08 10:50:09. Republished by Blog Post PromoterTechnology & Marketing Law Blog: “The keyword advertising legal roller-coaster continues.” As someone who is on that thrill ride — at least partly on the dime of my clients (as in the Buying for the Home case) — it is of course troubling for an expert such [...

In a family way

Posted on November 12, 2010
I’ve written, as is my wont, at great length regarding my skepticism about the “family of trademarks” concept. Well, once you’ve digested that, you may want to head over to Property, intangible, where Pamela Chestak — as is her wont — does some pretty darned heavy lifting on what seems to me to be a [...

Copywrong

Posted on November 12, 2010
Originally posted 2008-08-05 23:13:41. Republished by Blog Post PromoterCopyright doyen Bill Patry explains why he shut down his brilliant copyright law blog. Some of it had to do with his inability to prevent people from ascribing his personal views to his employer, Google...

The litigation of art

Posted on November 09, 2010
The Second Circuit has scheduled oral argument on December 8 at 10 a.m. at the U.S. Courthouse 9th Floor Ceremonial Courtroom at 500 Pearl Street in a case called Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art. My firm, together with co-counsel Rowland & Petroff, represents the heirs of George Grosz who are appealing a decision of [...

Certainty of Revelation

Posted on November 09, 2010
Originally posted 2008-06-08 18:23:20. Republished by Blog Post PromoterWe will be out of the reality-based loop (or will we?) due to the two-day observance of the Jewish festival of Shavuoth, the celebration of the Revelation that made the Jews the “chosen nation,” starting Sunday night through Tuesday night...

RIAA: Pillar of the Plaintiff’s Bar

Posted on November 09, 2010
Originally posted 2005-12-15 18:37:23. Republished by Blog Post PromoterReuters “news service” “reports”: A record industry trade group on Thursday said it filed lawsuits against 751 people it claims used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs...

New York’s MTA Has an IP Obsession

Posted on November 09, 2010
Originally posted 2005-11-06 11:21:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter The New York Sun reports that New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has filed to register the phrase “If You See Something, Say Something” — its “watch out for presents from the religion of peace” campaign on the New York public transit system — as a trademark...

Osama Kin Back in Brand Equity Play?

Posted on November 09, 2010
Originally posted 2005-02-27 00:56:00. Republished by Blog Post PromoterJoe Gandelman reports about a trademark story relating to the protection of the Bin Laden family name in Europe. No, not that Bin Laden — it’s about his evidently decent half brother, one of the 54 siblings and semi-siblings who didn’t blow anything up...

Speech and — more? — speech re Russ Feingold

Posted on November 05, 2010
Don’t say they’re anything but — what’s the term? — “fair and balanced” over at Randazza’s Legal Satyricon blog when it comes to the post-mortem on the end of Russ Feingold’s present level of responsibility with respect to the public trough trust...

Likelihood of conclusion

Posted on November 05, 2010
Originally posted 2008-10-20 16:32:36. Republished by Old Post PromoterWe won’t be online for a couple of days because of the last of the Jewish festival days of the season, Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah.  See ya! Likelihood of conclusion ©, .

Giving up the Web

Posted on November 05, 2010
Originally posted 2007-01-19 10:30:44. Republished by Old Post PromoterClickZ News says lawyers are “Giving Up on Web Trademark Infringement”: “Trademark dilution is death by a thousand cuts,” said Joe Dreitler, partner at Frost Brown Todd...

When your brand means just about nothing…

Posted on November 03, 2010
Holiday Inn, Cleveland Originally uploaded by Ron Coleman … you’ll slap onto just about anything, I guess. Or perhaps in a virtually abandoned district of a virtually abandoned city — in this case, Cleveland — it’s more along the lines of, If a brand is treated as valueless, does its crash to the pavement in a [...

Hotels.com is generic for…. what exactly?

Posted on November 03, 2010
Originally posted 2006-10-16 18:01:53. Republished by Old Post PromoterHotels, of course.  But read this whole item on the TTABlog. It’s a half a primer on the law of trademark in our time. Hotels.com is generic for…. what exactly? ©, .

Commented on “The Trademark Blog”

Posted on November 03, 2010
Originally posted 2009-09-10 21:42:19. Republished by Old Post PromoterMarty 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 [...

Hey, I know him!

Posted on November 03, 2010
Originally posted 2007-02-28 21:16:58. Republished by Old Post PromoterMy friend and colleague David Marc Nieporent is guest blogging this week at Overlawyered. Maybe this will shame him into resuming regular blogging (or maybe, a close second, he’ll be a regular at OL)...

Blame it on chain

Posted on November 03, 2010
Originally posted 2008-07-05 20:00:46. Republished by Old Post PromoterYou’d think a catalog page would be a great way, in a trademark registration application, to show use of a trademark “in commerce” associated with the goods or services being offered...

Spooky

Posted on November 02, 2010
Paul B. Kennedy’s The Defense Rests blog hosts Blawg Review #288 for Halloween. Scary stuff!  I stayed indoors with the lights on, myself. Spooky ©, .

They killed South Park?

Posted on November 02, 2010
Originally posted 2006-04-16 12:17:48. Republished by Old Post PromoterDiscussion about censorship and moral cowardice is brewing at Dean’s World. They killed South Park? ©, .

But you let THEM register a trademark like that!

Posted on November 02, 2010
Originally posted 2009-12-10 10:58:49. Republished by Old Post PromoterMichael Hall of Registration Ruminations is wrestling, as more and more trademark practitioners are, with the increasingly ubiquitous problem of inconsistency within the PTO on trademark registrations — a topic on which he’s developed genuine expertise...

Blogger lawsuit resolved

Posted on November 02, 2010
Originally posted 2007-04-17 11:43:48. Republished by Old Post PromoterJust Another Pretty Farce indeed! By the way, download Glenn Reynolds’s article (we’ve linked to it before) on online defamation. It… it would mean a lot to him. Blogger lawsuit resolved ©, .

Trademark attorneys shaken AND stirred over Walther product configuration TM ruling

Posted on October 29, 2010
Who says the Commissioner of Trademarks is “Dr. No”? To the contrary, some trademark registration applications Only Live Twice — and that’s quite enough.  John Welch, The Man with the Golden Blog,  reports on a TTAB ruling that wouldn’t let this remarkable trademark registration die: Rarely does a product configuration mark pass TTAB muster ...

I’ve got your blogger disclosure right here

Posted on October 29, 2010
Via Instapundit: IRA STOLL: Vanguard Blogger Is Democratic Donor. ?The Vanguard mutual fund official responsible for the pre-election Vanguard blog post crediting the Obama stimulus bill passed by Congressional Democrats with averting a second Great Depression has given $11,600 in campaign contributions over the past seven years ? every last cent of it to Democrats...

Copyright-wingers at the top

Posted on October 29, 2010
Originally posted 2009-02-06 09:56:46. Republished by Old Post PromoterSorry about all the politics, but this Slashdot item about the infiltration, via Joe Biden, of RIAA and BSA lawyers into the White House (via Insty) doesn’t bode well for the kind of “progressive” change on copyright law even a political right-winger such as your blogger may [...

DRM Watch

Posted on October 29, 2010
Originally posted 2007-05-30 19:05:14. Republished by Old Post PromoterDid you know about DRM Watch? If digital rights management is of interest to you, you should bookmark this site, edited by my old friend and college-radio colleague (dare I say mentor?) Bill Rosenblatt...

Mimeograph Me

Posted on October 29, 2010
Originally posted 2005-08-17 22:00:32. Republished by Old Post Promoter The online edition (free registration required) of the Times Herald-Record, “serving New York’s Hudson Valley and the Catskills,” reports about a blogger suit brought back from dead...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.