• Posts Tagged ‘abandonment’

    The First Amendment and Collective Marks

    by  • March 4, 2019 • trademark • 1 Comment

    The government has been trying to seize the MONGOLS trademark for over ten years. You can read my previous posts about it here, here, here and here.  The Mongol Nation, an unincorporated association, owned or owns several registrations for a trademark, service marks and collective membership marks for the word mark MONGOLS, the riding...

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    “Incontestability” and Cancellation

    by  • February 13, 2017 • trademark • 2 Comments

    I previously reported on a case that managed to find a non-statutory basis for cancelling an “incontestable” trademark registration, specifically that the application for the registration was void ab initio. The plaintiff and trademark owner was NetJets, with a registered trademark for a software program INTELLIJET. The defendant was a company named Intellijet Group....

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    Fifteen Years Later

    by  • April 20, 2016 • trademark • 0 Comments

    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...

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    Secondary Source Marks and Abandonment

    by  • March 6, 2016 • trademark • 1 Comment

    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...

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    Working Around Incontestability

    by  • October 22, 2015 • trademark • 0 Comments

    Once a trademark is incontestable, its validity cannot be challenged except on certain limited bases. Is “void ab initio” one of them? “Void ab initio” isn’t listed in the statute as a basis for challenge, but the defendant in NetJets Inc. v. IntelliJet Group, LLC found a workaround. The plaintiff registered its trademark, INTELLIJET,...

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    The Promiscuous Licensor

    by  • September 29, 2014 • trademark • 1 Comment

    I recently took the federal courts to task for what I submit is a disconnect between the statutory definition of “abandonment” and the “naked license” defense. My argument is that trademark owners are simply being punished for behavior that is seen as too lax, without any regard for whether that laxness has actually effected...

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