chain of title
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The Opposition, Cancellation and District Court Trifecta
Here we have multiple businesses originally operated by a husband and wife, now divorced and now adverse to each other, and the same rights to the same trademark litigated in three different venues. There are a couple of lessons here. One, put forward your best case at the TTAB. If you lose at the TTAB […] Continue reading
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You Can’t Just “Re-Form” a Plaintiff
Here are the facts: Ness Stewart Irvine was a patentee. Irvine assigned his patents-in-suit to InterAD Technologies, LLC. InterAD assigned them to Zeroclick, LLC (“Zeroclick I”), the plaintiff, a Texas entity. Zeroclick I sued Apple for patent infringement. Erich Spangenberg, listed as the “governing person,” terminated the Zeroclick I entity.1 Non-party Granicus IP, LLC transferred […] Continue reading
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It’s About the Evidence
Whole Foods Market filed an application to register the mark IDEAL MARKET for grocery stores, giving a first use date in 1940. Opposers Muwafak Kaki and Kaki Inc. opposed on the basis that they were joint owners of an IDEAL MARKET trademark that predated Whole Foods’ first use. Whole Foods filed a motion for summary […] Continue reading
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What It Takes to Get Attorneys’ Fees
This is a bit of a “duh” case from the Federal Circuit, a nonprecedential decision. The only surprising part of it is that the trial court, Judge Sparks in the Western District of Texas, didn’t impose even greater sanctions. It was quite a show of generosity. The patent-in-suit has a short chain of title; from […] Continue reading
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More on What Nunc Pro Tunc Means
One of my most read posts is “What Nunc Pro Tunc Means.” It means “now for then” in Latin, which is hardly much help. Extensive Google research tells me that it’s used to correct judicial orders, but that’s not what brings readers to my blog. In the IP field we typically use “nunc pro tunc” […] Continue reading
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Why You Have That Employment Agreement Gobbledygook
Plaintiff Advanced Video Technologies has been around the block a few times already. AVT claimed to be the successor to a patent for a video codec. It had successfully asserted the patent against other defendants but ran into some problems when trying to sue HTC Corp., Blackberry and Motorola Mobility. Its first attempt failed because […] Continue reading
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You Had One Job
The court: Exploiting the patent-in-suit in these cases, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,788 (the ‘788 patent), was AVT’s sole reason for being. The only precondition to Plaintiff’s fulfilling its singular purpose was its acquisition of title to the ‘788 patent. Obtaining ownership of the patent was AVT’s sine qua non, the only thing Plaintiff absolutely had […] Continue reading
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Not His First Time at the Rodeo
In 1992, plaintiff Oleg Pogrebnoy began publishing a Russian language newspaper in New York titled in Cyrillic “KYPbEP,” which translates as “courier”; Pogrebnoy also later used the word “Kurier.” Pogrebnoy claimed ownership of the unregistered trademarks through a chain of transactions, starting with his own use in 1992, through five different companies (probably all companies […] Continue reading
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The Value of Recording
A company assigned the same copyright in a film to two different companies. Who owns it? The film is Italian classic La Dolce Vita: The parties agree that a a company called Cinemat S.A. was the owner of the copyright, by assignment from original producer Riama Films S.p.A. The problem arises with the next link, […] Continue reading
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Another Band Name Ownership Decision
Ok, I’m very confused by the decision in the TTAB case O.T.H. Enterprises, Inc. v. Vasquez. What’s confusing is that the Board discusses, in two separate parts of the decision, ownership of the mark and priority. I don’t really get that – if the case is about who owns the mark, what other mark is […] Continue reading
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