Property, intangible

I recently wrote about a little-used (or so I thought) section of the Copyright Act, Section 201(e). It is a quirky little section that prohibits involuntary government transfer of copyright in certain cases: Involuntary Transfer.— When an individual author’s ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, has not… Continue reading

We routinely include arbitration provisions in agreements and I often wonder whether an arbitration is really any easier or cheaper than litigation. But what I didn’t realize before was how much latitude arbitrators have in what they can award, including, in this case, reforming the contract to grant a license far beyond what either party… Continue reading

John Welch recently blogged about a case in the Southern District of New York where a trademark registration was cancelled for fraud. The case has an interesting twist, because the fundamental question really was: who owns a pen name? Plaintiff Melodrama Publishing, LLC and defendant Danielle Santiago entered into two contracts for Santiago to write… Continue reading

Go read this story: “Firefly Hat Triggers Corporate Crackdown.” It’s a situation that is just so misguided. I’ll note that I’m taking the facts in the article as true; perhaps, as is often the case, there is more to the story. But the article tells the story of a hat, this hat: Continue reading

It’s black-letter law, as black as it gets, that in the United States a patent is initially owned by the individual inventor. As stated by the Supreme Court: “Since 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor.” Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior… Continue reading

Here’s a bankruptcy practice tip—you can’t just go signing documents when your company is in bankruptcy. Defendant Deep claimed to own the copyright in the “Aimster” software of yore. He accused plaintiff XAC, LLC, a subsidiary of Xerox, of copyright infringement. Deep had three different theories for why he owned the copyright in the software,… Continue reading

To have constitutional standing for a claim, the remedy must provide some redress for the claimant. In the case of correcting inventorship on a patent, it generally means the correction will provide a financial advantage, although in theory it could be a reputational advantage. But Shukh v. Seagate Technology, LLC shows that’s pretty hard to… Continue reading

Apparently in the Northern District of California, an exclusive licensee can successfully sue under Section 32 of the Lanham Act even though it doesn’t claim to be either owner or registrant. Continue reading

You all know that I’ll be having a “what were they thinking!” moment when I see a trademark case with a caption something like Del Monte v. Del Monte. We’ll start with the court’s opinion on the wisdom of the arrangement: Continue reading

If you previous saw a post that was titled “Blog is Moving,” you have found the new home. Welcome back. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Continue reading