trademark
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Fifteen Years Later
Almost 15 years ago I published an article about the then-common practice of creating a wholly-owned subsidiary to be an “IP holding company.” It was a tax strategy, where royalty payments, an expense to the parent, would be made to a subsidiary in a jurisdiction that didn’t tax the income on royalties. I don’t take… Continue reading
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What an Improvement
In 2006 I published an article in the Trademark Reporter proposing a theory for deciding, as between disputing parties, who owns a trademark. In the article I noted that courts struggled with a systematic approach to resolving an ownership dispute and, based largely on the existing case law that was commonly applied to manufacturer-distributor disputes,… Continue reading
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I Called It (Sort of)
I previously wrote about a case, Uptown Grill, L.L.C. v. Shwartz, with some boobery in the sale of a single-locale restaurant. There were two relevant documents, a Bill of Sale and a trademark license agreement, entered into 16 days apart. The Bill of Sale was between seller Shwartz and Uptown Grill LLC in exchange for… Continue reading
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Maybe Invented, But Not Used
Trademark ownership isn’t susceptible to an easy rubric. In The American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation v. Lyons, it might have appeared to the registrant, Lyons, that the facts were in her favor based on traditional elements considered when deciding ownership. But, looking at the big picture, the TTAB found otherwise. In 1999… Continue reading
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All I Know Is YOU Don’t Own It
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board is a tribunal of limited jurisdiction. All it has to decide is whether a particular applicant or registrant may own a registration for a particular trademark. In other words, it doesn’t have to decide who wins as between two parties, but rather just has to decide whether one party… Continue reading
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What the Paperwork Says
Here’s an utterly confusing situation, which I suppose is why there has been an arbitration, two lawsuits, and an appeal to the 9th Circuit with an unpublished decision. People, get the paperwork right. The situation involves Camelot Hair Care Products LLC, a woman named Nina Parkinson, and Robanda International Inc. A person named Tony Parkinson… Continue reading
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Secondary Source Marks and Abandonment
UPDATE: The parties settled, divvying up the brands. I haven’t written about “zombie” or “heritage” marks in a long time. I last wrote in 2011, about a suit involving department store brands that Macy’s acquired and rebranded, abandoning the original names of Marshall Field’s, I. Magnin, Burdine’s, Kaufmann’s, Lazarus, Meir & Frank, Rich’s and Strawbridge’s.… Continue reading
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STOLI Is Back
This is my sixth post (recursive link) about the STOLI case. The defendant, Spirits International B.V., claims to own the STOLI and STOLICHNAYA trademarks as a result of privatization during the collapse of the Soviet Union and is listed as the owner of the trademark registrations. The Russian government, acting through state entity Federal Treasury… Continue reading
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The Exemplar Case For Why Joint Trademark Ownership is Bad
According to McCarthy, “[w]hen there is a dispute over who owns a trademark, the worst possible solution is to allow mark ownership to be shared among the warring parties.” That is in the lastest opinion on the the YOGI marks, which I’ve written about many, many, many times before. The cases revolve around the rights… Continue reading
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Infringement Without Confusion?
It’s a simple case, but simple doesn’t mean you get to take shortcuts on the legal rationale. At the end of 1998 Ford and ThermoAnalytics entered into a License Agreement for RadTherm software for heat mapping. In the agreement, FGTI (Ford Global Technologies, Inc.) granted ThermoAnalytics an exclusive license to develop and commercialize “FGTI Licensed… Continue reading
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