Pamela Chestek
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No Infringement for Claim Conditioned on Rescission
Lufkin Industries sued Ken Nolen, Sim Gibbs and other former employees in Texas state court for trade secret misappropriation. Nolen and Gibbs counterclaimed alleging they were fraudulently induced to assign some patents to Lufkin and sought a declaration that they are the rightful owners of the patents. The counterclaim was severed and removed to federal… Continue reading
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I Don’t See This Going Very Far
Ray Charles was either an employee and wrote and performed music in the scope of his employment, or exercised his termination right to his songs in 1980 in settlement of a suit against his publisher, or alternatively the settlement was an assignment of the songs. Shortly before his death in 2004, he granted his 12… Continue reading
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Be Careful What You Wish For
In the past I reported on a dispute between Pinnacle Pizza, franchisee, and Little Caesar Enterprises (LCE), franchisor of Little Caesars pizza shops. Pinnacle Pizza invented the tagline “Hot ‘N Ready” for a particular promotional program, which was then adopted by the franchise chain. Pinnacle Pizza sued LCE, claiming that it, not LCE, owned the… Continue reading
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Who Owns a Domain Name?
If you say the person listed as the “registrant” in the domain name record owns the domain name, the court in Fraserside IP L.L.C. v. Kovalchukmight disagree with you. The question before the court was personal jurisdiction over Igor Kovalchuk, the person listed as the registrant of the website www-dot-DrTuber-dot-com (web site definitely not safe… Continue reading
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The Danger of Overreaching
drawing and specimen for plaintiff’s trade dress registration Plaintiff Lauren Brenner started Pure Power Boot Camp, a military-style exercise facility. She hired the defendants and they decided to start a competing business called Warrior Fitness Boot Camp. The defendants behaved despicably; while still her employees they had one’s client/girlfriend promote Warrior Fitness to Pure Power… Continue reading
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Treating Patents More Like Property
The Patently-O blog has a thoughtful post on patent ownership and licensing, advocating for a stricter recording requirement: Because of an inadequate system for recordation, prospective purchasers, licensees, lenders, and even defendants in a lawsuit may have to take it on faith that the seller, licensor, borrower, or plaintiff truly owns, and has not previously… Continue reading
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BODY UP Going to the District Court
The BODY UP decision at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has been appealed to the District Court for the District of Columbia.Body Up Dist. Ct. ComplaintThe text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Continue reading
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North Carolina IP Section Annual Meeting
I am pleased to be speaking at the 2012 North Carolina Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Section Annual Meeting on March 23, 2012. My session is titled “Who Owns the Intellectual Property?” I’ll be covering developing law surrounding the ownership of patent, copyright and trademark rights (what else?). Details here. Hope to see you there.… Continue reading
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No Do-Overs
Scanner Technologies Corp., the defendant in the declaratory judgment action, was the owner of 13 patents in the same family. There were multiple suits between it and declaratory judgment plaintiff ICOS Vision Systems, Inc. over “ball grid inspection devices,” which inspect the electrical connections between a microchip and circuit board. In 2008, ICOS filed a… Continue reading
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When the Law Fails
Sometimes I find great dissonance between the application of trademark law and the marketplace realities. The parties line all their legal ducks up in a nice straight row, but there’s just such an inconsistency between what the legal outcome is and what consumers’ understanding of the situation might be. E & J Gallo v. Proximo… Continue reading
About Me
Learn more about me at my website, Chestek Legal
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Categories
- copyright
- domain name
- moral rights
- patent
- right of publicity
- social media
- trade dress
- trade libel
- trade secret
- trademark
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