Pamela Chestek
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What Went Wrong?
Recently I’ve been thinking about the US rules of contract interpretation versus the approach used in other countries, UK law in particular. As I understand it, under UK law the courts have more latitude in interpreting the language of the agreement to derive what the parties intended than what we allow under US law. Which… Continue reading
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The Exemplar Case For Why Joint Trademark Ownership is Bad
According to McCarthy, “[w]hen there is a dispute over who owns a trademark, the worst possible solution is to allow mark ownership to be shared among the warring parties.” That is in the lastest opinion on the the YOGI marks, which I’ve written about many, many, many times before. The cases revolve around the rights… Continue reading
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Infringement Without Confusion?
It’s a simple case, but simple doesn’t mean you get to take shortcuts on the legal rationale. At the end of 1998 Ford and ThermoAnalytics entered into a License Agreement for RadTherm software for heat mapping. In the agreement, FGTI (Ford Global Technologies, Inc.) granted ThermoAnalytics an exclusive license to develop and commercialize “FGTI Licensed… Continue reading
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A Proper Copyright Assignment
I have called Righthaven the gift that keeps on giving. In Righthaven, the plaintiff tried to obscure the fact that there wasn’t a true copyright assignment by putting the relevant terms in different agreements. Righthaven, a copyright troll, eventually got whacked for it by the 9th Circuit. Now, when defendants see any kind of retained… Continue reading
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Never Underestimate the Burden of Proof
Trademark examining attorneys occasionally make mistakes and often the error can’t be challenged once the trademark is registered.* In Vujovic v. Octop there was a clear procedural error and it was most likely outcome determinative. Two people worked together at a company called “Octop.” The opinion doesn’t have much information (because most of the evidence… Continue reading
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Copyright and Egyptian Law
Jay-Z’s win in a copyright infringement suit has been widely reported. Jay-Z obtained a license to use an Egyptian work written by Baligh Namdi called “Khosara, Khosara” in “Big Pimpin”: Namdi’s heir, Fahmy, sued Jay-Z claiming that “Big Pimpin” was an unlawful derivative work, infringing both the moral and economic rights in Khosara, Khosara. Moral… Continue reading
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Working Around Incontestability
Once a trademark is incontestable, its validity cannot be challenged except on certain limited bases. Is “void ab initio” one of them? “Void ab initio” isn’t listed in the statute as a basis for challenge, but the defendant in NetJets Inc. v. IntelliJet Group, LLC found a workaround. The plaintiff registered its trademark, INTELLIJET, for computer… Continue reading
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Beware UGC
In a contest that requires a creative contribution, the contest sponsor will generally require that the participant assign the copyright in the contributed work. LittleMismatched did no differently, but it ran into some trouble because its target demographic is young girls. Mix children and contract and it gets a little trickier. The plaintiff, I.C., was… Continue reading
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But What’s the End Game?
The U.S. government has been in a multi-year, multi-indictment quest to acquire the trademarks of the Mongols motorcycle club. You can find the whole complicated background here, but the short version is that, because of improper assignments, the government indicted the wrong party the first time around. So the government is back, this time indicting… Continue reading
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You Had One Job
The court: Exploiting the patent-in-suit in these cases, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,788 (the ‘788 patent), was AVT’s sole reason for being. The only precondition to Plaintiff’s fulfilling its singular purpose was its acquisition of title to the ‘788 patent. Obtaining ownership of the patent was AVT’s sine qua non, the only thing Plaintiff absolutely had… Continue reading
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