Pamela Chestek
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Heavy Hitting in Las Vegas
The Law Vegas Trademark Attorney gives us background on a newly-filed dispute over the mark HEAVY HITTER(S). It’s an interesting situation – it looks like an advertising agency registered the mark HEAVY HITTER (although the certificate says HEAVY HITTERS) for legal services and relied on licensees’ use to support its registration. Glen Lerner, of Law… Continue reading
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NY Times on Revival of Brands
There’s an interesting NYT article that attributes the resurgence of revived brands (blogged here) to tougher economic times – it’s cheaper to revive than build from scratch. © 2008 Pamela Chestek Continue reading
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Aerotel Visits the United States
The name “Aerotel” is fairly well known in the UK, at least among software companies. The UK doctrine on patentability of business methods and software is known as Aerotel/Macrossan, after the pair of cases decided in Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holding Ltd and others, and Neal William Macrossan’s application [2006] EWCA 1371 (Civ) (2006-10-27). The… Continue reading
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Bratz Verdict!
The verdict is in, but not without some confusion. Reuters reported a verdict for Mattel for $100 million, AP says $40 million. I suppose either way it’s a lot of money. Here’s the horse’s mouth, see for yourself. For all parties combined it could be $100,031,500, plus a little interest: $66,031,500 from MGA, $33,000,000 from… Continue reading
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Steamboat Willie as Public Domain
The LA Times recently ran a story about whether some early “Steamboat Willie” cartoons are still protected by copyright. It’s not new news; in 2003, inspired by an internet article, Douglas Hedenkamp wrote a law review article on the subject and concluded they are not. But an entertaining article for both the gist of the… Continue reading
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Hint from the Bratz Jury
Reuters is reporting that the Mattel v. MGA Entertainment jurors asked “Can we find that the first generation dolls violate copyright but the second generation do not?” Continue reading
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The NFL is One Entity – For Trademark Licensing, Anyway
An appropriate decision for football season; the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has affirmed, in an antitrust case, that the exclusive licensing of all professional football teams marks to one vendor is not a violation of the Sherman Act. NFL Properties is an unincorporated organization of 32 separately owned teams. Each team owns… Continue reading
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Goodwill for Sale
The area of “residual goodwill” seems to be a hot one lately. I posted recently on River West Brands and Chrysler LLC v. Pimpo, two “residual goodwill” situations, and the TTABlog recently posted on a third one involving the LaSalle trademark for automobiles. “Residual goodwill” describes the significance of a trademark when it is no… Continue reading
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EasyTrademark Licensing
The IPKat has brought our attention to a spat between Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, and that airline over its use of “easy” for more than just plain Jane “easyJet.” Seems Sir Stelios licenses the easyJet name to the airline through a licensing company called easyGroup IP Licensing, and finds that easyJet’s use of… Continue reading
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And Not Even a Passing Reference to Whitman’s Chocolates
Family relationships are frequent fodder for a blog about ownership of IP and also my favorite kind of case, because they are such tangled human stories. The contracts are also poor or nonexistent and the IP rights misunderstood if recognized at all, so trying to get to a fair outcome sometimes an interesting exercise. I… Continue reading
About Me
Learn more about me at my website, Chestek Legal
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