Pamela Chestek
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The Agreement At Work
I have a crush on the trademark assignment agreement of the Tavern on the Green mark. It’s a tour de force of drafting. In a nutshell, for decades the City of New York leased the premises for the famous Tavern on the Green to a restauranteur. In 2009 the restauranteur lost its lease, but by… Continue reading
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A Covenant Not to Sue Is Not An Exclusive License
I am quite puzzled by this decision. It is designated by the court as “not for publication,” which may explain why the reasoning is so unclear. In March 1989, John Z. DeLorean, creator of the DeLorean car, entered into a license agreement with Universal Pictures, licensing the use of the car in “Back to the… Continue reading
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Illustrating Why Registration Should Not Be Required
I suggested in a recent blog post that the Copyright Act should be amended to eliminate the requirement that a copyright must be registered before one can file a copyright infringement lawsuit. My position is that the registration does nothing to aid the court in its decisionmaking and the additional step it adds to the… Continue reading
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The Cluster That Is Copyright Registration
Subtitled “Writing it so @RickSanders doesn’t have to“ The copyright registration system, as it relates to an infringement case, is utterly and completely broken. We need reform. Here are the facts we’ll assume are true for purposes of today’s rant. Plaintiff SellPoolSuppliesOnline.com, LLC (SPSO) provided Ugly Pools Arizona, Inc., the defendant and a company SPSO… Continue reading
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What Is the Mark Being Used?
What Is the Mark Being Used? Two entities are disputing the ownership of the domain name “coralgardens.com.” The domain name is owned by Reef Residences Management Ltd., a company that manages short term rentals for the Coral Gardens condominium resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies. The Proprietors, Strata Plan No. 36,… Continue reading
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Real Party in Interest
There is an ongoing dispute between the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, more commonly known as “The Grange,” and a former chapter in California. National Grange established the California State Grange in 1873 and it registered as a California corporation in 1946. In 2012, there was a dispute between the California… Continue reading
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Saved by the Paris Convention
Here’s a drafting lesson: if you’re granting rights to a trademark, you should have the trademark rights. That sounds like an obvious lesson, but I’ll bet it happens all the time, in the same way it happened to defendant Worldwide Entertainment Group. I’ll bet a lot of you have done it. The plaintiff Adria MM… Continue reading
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Removing the Veil
We’re all familiar with the concept of “piercing the corporate veil.” As a general rule, the owner of a legal entity, like the parent of a subsidiary, or the shareholder of a company, is legally insulated from the wrongdoing of the owned company. In some cases though, where the owner and the company haven’t done… Continue reading
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It’s About the Evidence
Whole Foods Market filed an application to register the mark IDEAL MARKET for grocery stores, giving a first use date in 1940. Opposers Muwafak Kaki and Kaki Inc. opposed on the basis that they were joint owners of an IDEAL MARKET trademark that predated Whole Foods’ first use. Whole Foods filed a motion for summary… Continue reading
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When Is It a License?
When reviewing a settlement agreement, I often ponder the parts where it says something like “Party B agrees not to infringe the trademark in the future.” The agreement doesn’t need it; whether you say it or not Party B isn’t allowed to break the law. I suppose adding the language gives you a breach of… Continue reading
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