Property, intangible

Former licensee’s current web page I previously reported on a bit of a bone-headed dispute between Orange County Choppers (OCC), of “American Chopper” television fame, and a company that designed T-shirts for it, Olaes Enterprises, Inc. d/b/a ODM (ODM). OCC made the mistake of suing ODM for royalties and ODM counterclaimed against 25 companies that… Continue reading

You don’t see it happen much at all, but a band managed to successfully, including on appeal, claim ownership of the band’s name, despite contractual agreements that conceded the name was owned by the original management company and its successor. We’re talking about an unregistered trademark here, for the band Exposé. (There was an early… Continue reading

I have sympathy for small businesses. Just working stiffs, plumbers for example, trying make a living day to day. You have to watch the pennies, you’ve got equipment costs, rent and salaries and rising health insurance costs and there’s only so much the market will bear.  Trademarks are going to be really low on the… Continue reading

Awhile back I reported on a case where a jus tertii defense was allowed to go forward.  The defendant, Baroody Imports, claimed that its licensor, Orouba Agrifoods Processing Company, an Egyptian company and not a party to the suit, really owned the “Basma” trademark Baroody  was accused of infringing, not plaintiff United Food Imports. But… Continue reading

One opposed mark The TTABlog brings us the last (?) chapter in the Winnie the Pooh story – well, it’s the last pending action at least, after a state court litigation, an appeal of it, a federal court litigation, and an appeal of it, all of which SSI lost.  But never say never. The parties,… Continue reading

There’s a presumption in manufacturer-distributor cases that the manufacturer owns the mark. Is the presumption deserved? What is fundamentally different between a manufacturer-distributor relationship and one where a company contracts for the manufacture of its product (an OEM relationship), when there isn’t the same presumption? Does it fall into one category or the other just… Continue reading

I haven’t been blogging about the Righthaven case because there are many other bloggers doing a great job. You know, Righthaven, who is going around finding bloggers reproducing articles from the Denver Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal and suing them for copyright infringement.  But I thought that I’d show you how miserably Righthaven screwed… Continue reading

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc. In an important new decision, the Supreme Court held that Congress did not change one of the fundamental precepts of patent law – that the individual inventor is the original owner of invention – obliquely, through an ambiguous definition of “subject… Continue reading

Some cases make you wonder more about the lawyers. Did they come in to the situation too late and just have a mess to clean up? Have they counseled their clients about their odds? Original Rex, LLC v. Beautiful Brands International, LLC just looks like such a long shot, but some clients can’t be deterred.… Continue reading

This is kind of a no-brainer of an ownership case. I’m blogging it more for the sake of completeness than anything else.Defendant Dietmar Wittmann, an employee of the Medical College of Wisconsin, invented a surgical patch for abdominal surgery.  He assigned the rights to the patch (the case doesn’t say exactly what rights, but we’ll… Continue reading