trademark
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If a Web Site Falls In The Woods, Is It In Use?
John Welch pointed me to a curious new site – “USTrademarkExchange.com.” According to the home page, USTrademarkExchange.com is a new website that connects registered trademark sellers and buyers. Many industry professionals view trademarks as a unique kind of intellectual property (IP), quite different from either patents or copyrights. As as a result we have created… Continue reading
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish#Regeneration
Wikipedia is a registered trademark, owned by Wikimedia Foundation. A New York Times article says “nearly every time Wikipedia has come to a fork in the road where the project could have chosen to impose more restrictions on who could edit what — even insist on a bit of expertise — it has chosen not… Continue reading
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Starfish and Spiders
I’ve been reading The Starfish and the Spider. The premise of the book is that some organizations are centralized and top-down, which is the spider – you cut the head off and it dies. But there are decentralized, non-hierarchical organizations that are like a starfish – if you cut it in half, it becomes two… Continue reading
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The SCO Group Wins One -Trademark, That Is
The effects of the infamous SCO Group copyright lawsuits ripple on and on. I can’t begin to summarize the complexities of the cases, but if you’re interested you can spend a few years perusing this site. In a sentence, The SCO Group claimed to be the owner of the copyright in one prong of the… Continue reading
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Tweeeeet!!
HT to Marty on the story about the bird graphic on the home page of Twitter. I hesitate to call it a “trademark,” although I would have but for the story. Wired reports that Twitter got the design from iStockPhoto and paid the usual licensing fee for an editorial use of the design. (I looked… Continue reading
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Coining a Geographic Identifier
If you’re appealing a decision that “OBX” is generic for oval stickers with “OBX” printed on them, is it a good sign or a bad sign that the appeals court decision starts out “James Douglas cleverly invented ‘OBX’ as an abbreviation for the “Outer Banks” of North Carolina”? Bad. In a well-reasoned and well-written opinion,… Continue reading
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The Risk of the Silent License
A previous post looked at a contract that was silent on trademark ownership and licensing, leaving the court to sort out who owned the trademark in dispute. A similar problem, a contract silent on the trademark, was decided in the Northern District of Indiana on the same day. This time, it was decided in the… Continue reading
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Think of the Trademark License, Too
Two opinions issuing on the same day, one in Connecticut and one in Indiana, are parallel situations. In both cases, there was a contractual relationship that fell apart. The relationships had a trademark aspect to them, but the contracts never addressed the use or ownership of the trademarks directly, leaving the courts to sort it… Continue reading
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JOYCE Still Up for Grabs
Awhile back I blogged on a TTAB opposition and cancellation between the Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. and Ballet Tech Foundation, Inc. The proceeding involved a dispute over who owns the mark JOYCE, the foundation that purchased and renovated a theater named JOYCE or the foundation that ran the facility. The TTAB held that the foundation… Continue reading
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A Less than Iron Clad Theory
In the past few years John Welch at the TTABlog has organized a Boston road trip for the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. They’re great events and I highly recommend that anyone nearby make it there. This past October, the TTAB held an inter partes hearing in Iron Man Magazine versus the Ironman Triathalon for… Continue reading
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