abandonment
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Who Will Win – Doctrine or Pragmatism?
Some cases make you wonder and UFA Holdings, Inc. v. Performance Acquisition Group Company is one of them. It’s newly filed in Oregon, as reported by local news channel KTMR.com. The first “G.I. Joe’s” store opened in 1947 and ultimately grew to a chain of 27 stores. As told in the plaintiff’s memorandum in support… Continue reading
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The City Owns “Tavern on the Green”
You just can’t trust your readership. When the City of New York first claimed that it owned the name of the landmark New York City restaurant “Tavern on the Green,” I posted a poll asking readers’ opinion. The result from the many, many voters (15) was resoundingly in favor of the restaurant. We were wrong,… Continue reading
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Ball Bearing Trademark Rolling Free, Like a Fumbled Football
Both plaintiff and defendant sell ball bearings using the same four-digit codes. The codes provide information on the characteristics of the bearings. But this isn’t a copyright case about the numbering system, it’s a claim that the series numbers are trademarks. The plaintiff, RBC Nice Bearings Inc., f/k/a Nice Ball Bearing Co. (“Nice”), started selling… Continue reading
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A Very Short License
The Trademark Blog reports on a new case where two companies claim to own the same mark. In the complaint, the plaintiff and trademark registrant claims that it licensed the mark to the defendant but later terminated the license. The defendant’s website says that it acquired the business from the plaintiff. Here is the relevant… Continue reading
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It’s Only One Mark
Sometimes the TTAB is an alternative reality. It’s happening right now as it struggles with trademark ownership disputes. In Arturo Santana Gallego v. Santana’s Grill, Inc., there was family falling out. The TTAB reached a conclusion that may be right, but in a way that is so doctrinally irrelevant that we can’t know. The cast… Continue reading
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish#Regeneration
Wikipedia is a registered trademark, owned by Wikimedia Foundation. A New York Times article says “nearly every time Wikipedia has come to a fork in the road where the project could have chosen to impose more restrictions on who could edit what — even insist on a bit of expertise — it has chosen not… Continue reading
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Starfish and Spiders
I’ve been reading The Starfish and the Spider. The premise of the book is that some organizations are centralized and top-down, which is the spider – you cut the head off and it dies. But there are decentralized, non-hierarchical organizations that are like a starfish – if you cut it in half, it becomes two… Continue reading
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The Risk of the Silent License
A previous post looked at a contract that was silent on trademark ownership and licensing, leaving the court to sort out who owned the trademark in dispute. A similar problem, a contract silent on the trademark, was decided in the Northern District of Indiana on the same day. This time, it was decided in the… Continue reading
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JOYCE Still Up for Grabs
Awhile back I blogged on a TTAB opposition and cancellation between the Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. and Ballet Tech Foundation, Inc. The proceeding involved a dispute over who owns the mark JOYCE, the foundation that purchased and renovated a theater named JOYCE or the foundation that ran the facility. The TTAB held that the foundation… Continue reading
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Motherless IP Children
The IPKat has a great post on acquiring trademarks that escheat to the Crown. The comments section gives some tips on how to go about it, and promises an update. © 2009 Pamela Chestek Continue reading
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