Property, intangible

The legal significance of a “license” to the BUTTERNUT trademark has been in dispute for ten years now. I put “license” in quotes because while the document in question is called a license, it’s not your typical trademark license. In 1996, in settlement of an antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department, defendant Interstate Bakeries… Continue reading

I’ve been writing for some time (recursive link) about numerous lawsuits between photographers, or their agencies, and textbook publishers that have used photographs in excess of what they originally licensed for their books. Mostly I’ve been writing about challenges to standing, which are early in the cases on a motion to dismiss. But some of… Continue reading

It always gets interesting when an owner has incentive to make inconsistent claims about the same intangible asset in different venues. Say, for example, where you claim that copyrights are part of your deceased spouse’s estate to keep them out of bankruptcy and then try to claim you are the owner for purposes of a… Continue reading

I mean, I hate to write about it. It’s convoluted, tedious, and the cases don’t generally tell the good juicy stories that I like so much. Luckily for all of us though, there is someone who loves to write about copyright termination, Dave Fagundes. He has a blog devoted to the topic  and it’s awesome.… Continue reading

Small businesses or community organizations, like restaurants or well-meaning citizens running a charitable fund-raising event, often don’t have many formalities around their operation, so when there is a dispute over the ownership of the name it’s bound to be very messy. But I don’t think there is any more vexing trademark ownership situation than that… Continue reading

On the left we have a disinterested patent owner; there was a mixup about the status of an inventor, Bruce Draper, so he assigned his rights in what ultimately became the ‘321 patent to the University of New Mexico (UNM) rather than his employer, Sandia. UNM realized the mistake and assigned to Sandia “those rights… Continue reading

To this blog. Five years, 530 posts. Continue reading

I previously reported on the matter of Hendricks & Lewis PLLC v. Clinton, that is, a law firm versus George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic fame. Clinton owed Hendricks & Lewis a lot of money but didn’t pay. In the opinion I previously covered, the lower court appointed a receiver who was given the authority to maximize… Continue reading

I’ve written before (recursive link) about copyright registrations by photo agencies. Rather than individual photographers registering their own works, it is common practice for a photo agency to periodically register the works of many photographers en masse. As described in a recent 9th Circuit opinion, the process was created collaboratively by a photography trade association… Continue reading

I don’t write much about patent ownership because there just isn’t a lot of interesting stuff going on. There are two major ways it goes wrong for a plaintiff: there is a missing patent owner uncovered or the conveyance assigned less that all rights to the plaintiff. These two situations are litigated so commonly I… Continue reading