trademark
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The Cloud Picks What Brand You Are Selling
Stanford Law School‘s Center for Internet and Society is not where I usually get content for my blog. But Larry Downs has written an interesting story about an experience with buying what could easily be characterized as a counterfeit camera battery on Amazon.com. The twist is that the vendor claims he didn’t brand the battery,… Continue reading
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There’s Always Your First Name
From the caption you can guess the story in MacKenzie-Childs, Ltd. v. Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs: Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs started a business, didn’t have the business anymore, and then there was a dispute over who owned the name. The MacKenzie-Childs story is a little different from Joseph Abboud but still comes out the same.… Continue reading
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Off-Topic
It’s off-topic, but I encourage everyone to go take a look atopensource.com, a web site launched today by my employer, Red Hat. It’s a place to talk about open source and the power of working openly and collaboratively. Come join the conversation. Continue reading
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Can NBC Own the Intangibles?
Law.com is reporting that Conan O’Brien will have to give up the intellectual property rights in the characters and recurring skits that he developed during his NBC career. It’s not all entirely clear who owns what and who’s giving up what. The New York Times reports NBC claims to be co-owner of Triumph the Insult… Continue reading
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Ball Bearing Trademark Rolling Free, Like a Fumbled Football
Both plaintiff and defendant sell ball bearings using the same four-digit codes. The codes provide information on the characteristics of the bearings. But this isn’t a copyright case about the numbering system, it’s a claim that the series numbers are trademarks. The plaintiff, RBC Nice Bearings Inc., f/k/a Nice Ball Bearing Co. (“Nice”), started selling… Continue reading
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These Economic Times
In catching up on my reading over the holidays, I ran across three separate opinions where the licensee estoppel defense was raised (score: trademark owner 2, licensee 1). I don’t recall the last time I read another opinion on licensee estoppel. Is it a sign of these economic times? Are licensors looking for more income?… Continue reading
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Famous Brands, Now Barely Breathing
I’ve previously written about the deathly ill POLAROID brand. In a compilation of the Twelve Most Tarnished Brands, Technologizer ranks it number 1: But if Polaroid can fall this far, no name is sacred. Apple and Google, take heed–and give thought to where you might wind up come 2060 or so if you aren’t careful.… Continue reading
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Act Two
In Act One of Third Education Group, Inc. v. Phelps, we had Richard Phelps versus Bruce Thompson, an informal partnership that turned sour. In the first decision, the court held that the registration for the mark they were both using, Third Education Group, was void because it was filed in the name of Richard Phelps… Continue reading
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Does the Parent Own the Mark?
The TTABlog reports on a decision invoking In re Wella to try to escape a likelihood of confusion refusal. In re Wella is a 1986 Federal Circuit decision which held that corporate family members (in that case, parent and subsidiary) may own substantially similar marks without a likelihood of confusion so long as there is… Continue reading
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Bratz Stayed!!
I consider myself the unofficial recordkeeper for the Bratz litigation (so it was fate that the Secret Santa I pulled was for a Moxie Girlz), but I must have been sleeping on the job because everyone has jumped on this one before me. So playing catch-up to what’s already been reported by the IPKat, Techdirt,… Continue reading
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