Property, intangible

a blog about ownership of intellectual property rights and its licensing

trademark

  • Get a License

    Ryan Gile, the Las Vegas Trademark Attorney, reports on an interesting and complicated new lawsuit revolving around the ownership of the mark TROPICANA – for casinos and hotels, not orange juice. “The Tropicana’s famous roadside sign, a Las Vegas landmark dominating the Strip and welcoming arriving guests for a half-century.” (from the complaint). The complaint… Continue reading

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  • Was It a License or an Assignment?

    Steve Saleen’s SMS 460 Steve Saleen makes high performance cars. He sold Saleen, Inc. in 2003 and left the company altogether in 2007. In 2008 Steve Saleen started a new company, Steve Saleen’s SMS Supercars. Saleen, Inc’s assets, including the right to use “Saleen” for superchargers, aftermarket parts and high-performance vehicles, was sold to MJ… Continue reading

  • Senior User to One’s Self

    When a case is captioned Protech Diamond Tools, Incorporation v. Protech Diamond Tool Inc., you know that there’s a fight about who owns a mark. Protech Diamond Tool is actually the second named defendant, but you get the idea. There are at least three different “Protech” entities mentioned in the suit.* The first is non-party… Continue reading

  • Is a Name Necessarily a Mark?

    (Joseph Abboud, 2005) In 2000, Joseph Abboud sold at least the trademarks for “Joseph Abboud” to his former company, JA Apparel Corp. Others have blogged on the Second Circuit’s reversal of the district court decision that had stopped menswear designer Joseph Abboud from using his own name to promote a new line of clothing he… Continue reading

  • Who Owns the Chirp?

    The TTAB recently decided a case about the registrability of a “chirp” made by Motorola phones. Motorola filed an application to register “an electronic chirp consisting of a tone at 1800 Hz played at a cadence of 24 milliseconds ON, 24 ms OFF, 24 ms ON, 24 ms OFF, 48 ms ON.” Nextel Communications opposed… Continue reading

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  • Uh-oh Moment

    Terra Sul Corp. a/k/a Churrascaria Boi Na Brasa v. Boi Na Braza, Inc. is one of those “uh oh” cases. It’s a fairly routine examination of a petitioner’s first use date to determine who is senior user of the mark. The “uh oh” is a theory that the mark, when transferred from the sole proprietor… Continue reading

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  • “Filed,” Not “Executed”

    It pays to read the statute sometimes. If the statute says “the applicant shall file in the Patent and Trademark Office . . . ,” having the former applicant file it isn’t going to work. The former applicant signed the document before it assigned the mark, but then filed the document after the assignment to… Continue reading

  • No Good News for MGA Entertainment

    The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Kozinski, Paez and Tallman) has summarily denied MGA Entertainment’s motion for a stay pending appeal: “MGA Entertainment, Inc., MGA Entertainment HK Ltd. and Isaac Larian’s (‘MGA’s’) motion for a stay pending appeal is denied. MGA has not met the prevailing standard to show a substantial likelihood of… Continue reading

  • Will the Real MG Please Stand Up

    The IP Finance blog has an excellent post on pitfalls in the sale of trademarks out of bankruptcy. The whole article is useful (and good advice on both sides of the Atlantic), but the most interesting part is the story of how the family of MG marks was split, so that one mark went to… Continue reading

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  • What Exactly is “Intellectual Property”?

    The concept of “intellectual property” is often used as a generic category, particularly in contracts. So what does it mean for an amusement park? The “Hard Rock Park” was an amusement park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This isn’t going where you think; it’s not about the HARD ROCK marks. The park had been designed… Continue reading

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