Property, intangible

An appropriate decision for football season; the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has affirmed, in an antitrust case, that the exclusive licensing of all professional football teams marks to one vendor is not a violation of the Sherman Act. NFL Properties is an unincorporated organization of 32 separately owned teams. Each team owns… Continue reading

The area of “residual goodwill” seems to be a hot one lately. I posted recently on River West Brands and Chrysler LLC v. Pimpo, two “residual goodwill” situations, and the TTABlog recently posted on a third one involving the LaSalle trademark for automobiles. “Residual goodwill” describes the significance of a trademark when it is no… Continue reading

The IPKat has brought our attention to a spat between Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, and that airline over its use of “easy” for more than just plain Jane “easyJet.” Seems Sir Stelios licenses the easyJet name to the airline through a licensing company called easyGroup IP Licensing, and finds that easyJet’s use of… Continue reading

Family relationships are frequent fodder for a blog about ownership of IP and also my favorite kind of case, because they are such tangled human stories. The contracts are also poor or nonexistent and the IP rights misunderstood if recognized at all, so trying to get to a fair outcome sometimes an interesting exercise. I… Continue reading

In the past I could have just linked to William Patry’s blog for a case like this, but unfortunately no more. We’ll just have to soldier on and do our best to understand the intricacies of termination rights in copyright law without the benefit of his knowledge and insight. A recently published termination case, Penguin… Continue reading

The 9th Circuit, brief and to the point: Petitioners’ motion to file portions of the emergency motion and the petition for writ of mandamus under seal is granted. The motion to exceed the page limitation on the petition is granted. The emergency motion for an order suspending trial is denied. Petitioners have not demonstrated that… Continue reading

A local segment from WBUR’s broadcast of this morning’s NPR show “Morning Edition” was about a dispute in Massachusetts over the rightful owner of Lizzie Borden’s history. The argument is in the form of a trademark lawsuit, where the owner of the “Lizzie Borden Museum” trademark (website here) filed a complaint for trademark infringement in… Continue reading

Watching the Bratz litigation has become a bit of a hobby for me. Law.com reports that MGA applied for a writ of mandamus with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, asking it to overturn the district court’s denial of the motion for mistrial that MGA filed when it learned that a juror was… Continue reading

Thanks to John Welch for pointing me to a new decision from the TTAB, Chrysler LLC v. Pimpo. Chrysler LLC opposed the registration of the mark RAMBLER for “automobiles and structural parts therefor” by Anthony S. Pimpo. RAMBLER is, of course, a model of car that was produced from 1950 to 1969 – you may… Continue reading

This IP Finance blog post points us to a publication by the UK Intellectual Property Office giving some basics for licensing intellectual property. It looks like a useful handbook to remind us of the various points to remember when doing licensing work. Continue reading