Pamela Chestek
-
Who Do You Associate “BorderFest” With?
There’s an interesting trademark ownership fact pattern as described by a Texas state appeals court in Vera v. City of Hidalgo. I find it interesting in two ways. First, there is no mention of the statutory or common law basis for the claim. It’s characterized as ownership of a cultural festival name, but the court… Continue reading
-
There Is Just No Way Around the Absent Patent Owner
I’m writing about an inventorship case mostly because I have to bone up before I speak at the AIPLA Mid-Winter Institute in a talk rivetingly titled “The Backlash from Mismanagement of Inventorship in Multi-Party Deals.” If you’re attending, consider Speedfit LLC v. Woodway USA, Inc. your homework assignment. The plaintiffs are an inventor, Aurel Astilean,… Continue reading
-
What’s a “Trolley Pub,” You Ask?
I’m SO glad you did, because I can tell you all about the Trolley Pub® transport services – note the care with which I’ve used the term as a trademark, although I will dispense with any effort to use it in adjective-noun form from now on. The Trolley Pub is a pedal-powered street trolley for… Continue reading
-
I Think I Heard the Phone Ringing …
John Welch put in the call, and I’ll pick up. If you didn’t read his post on Emerald Cities Collaborative, Inc v. Roese, go read it now. Section 10 of the Lanham Act limits the assignability of intent-to-use trademark applications. One can assign an ITU application only after the Amendment to Allege Use or the… Continue reading
-
Open Source Software 2016 — from Compliance to Cooperation
I am pleased to be speaking in San Francisco next week, December 21, at the Practicing Law Institute’s CLE on open source software “From Compliance to Cooperation.” Shane Curcuru, Vice President for the Apache Foundation, and I will be talking about trademarks in open source software. You can attend live at the PLI center in… Continue reading
-
Tolerated Infringement
A trademark ownership dispute generally means taking a very mushy set of facts and deciding who has the superior claim. Generally, avoiding likelihood of confusion is the paramount interest, so the outcome will mean that one party will have to cease its use. But sometimes courts allow what I call “tolerated infringement,” concurrent uses that… Continue reading
-
More on What Nunc Pro Tunc Means
One of my most read posts is “What Nunc Pro Tunc Means.” It means “now for then” in Latin, which is hardly much help. Extensive Google research tells me that it’s used to correct judicial orders, but that’s not what brings readers to my blog. In the IP field we typically use “nunc pro tunc”… Continue reading
-
Two Band Members Heave a Sigh of Relief
I have written several times before (caution recursive link) about the copyright infringement lawsuit over the highly-successful “Jersey Boys” musical, based on the band the Four Seasons. Briefly, the widow of an author of an unpublished biography of one of the band members, Tommy DeVito, claimed infringement of the book. It’s very convoluted with just… Continue reading
-
Round and Round
We have one of my favorite things, a chain of title case, and one about a band name to boot. Usually band name cases are pretty ugly, about a bunch of people getting together without any legal formalities. But this is not that case. We have the 80’s glam band RATT (official website – or… Continue reading
-
Read It Twice
Boy, is it hard to write an effective invention assignment for an employment agreement. First, under US law only a natural person can be an inventor, not a juristic person. When you have an employee whose job is inventing, the solution is to create an automatic assignment to the employer, which is generally done when… Continue reading
About Me
Learn more about me at my website, Chestek Legal
Recent Posts
Categories
- copyright
- domain name
- moral rights
- patent
- right of publicity
- social media
- trade dress
- trade libel
- trade secret
- trademark
- Uncategorized