• Posts Tagged ‘contract’

    Don’t Be Too Agreeable

    by  • August 19, 2019 • patent • 1 Comment

    Plaintiff Tegu is a toy company. It hired defendant Vestal Design Atelier LLC to develop its first toy line. Vestal created prototypes for Tegu for blocks with embedded magnets. These are the relevant provisions on ownership of the intellectual property rights in the agreement: 2.0 Ownership of Intellectual Property. 1. Ownership. Intellectual property rights...

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    Patent Infringement Versus Breach of Contract

    by  • April 29, 2019 • patent • 1 Comment

    Something that license drafters need to think through is how a license grant works, as a permission, not a prohibition. If there is conduct that a licensor wants to prohibit, then it has to ensure that it addresses that need in the agreement. The licensor also needs to think through what remedies will be...

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    Were the Assignments Valid?

    by  • March 18, 2019 • copyright • 2 Comments

    Sometimes a case sends you back to the basics. This was one of those cases for me. Copyright infringement claims against Dollar General appear to be the driving force behind a sequence of assignments of the copyrights for some toys. The relevant chain of title for the copyrights was Acquawood => Focus Brand Limited...

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    Contracts 101

    by  • January 22, 2015 • patent • 0 Comments

    Patent law heavily involves interpretation of language. In addition to the construction of the claims themselves, it has an almost unintelligible set of rules for distinguishing licenses from assignments and special rules for the language one must use to assign a patent. But in Fort. v. Innegra Technologies, LLC, we have a more interesting...

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    Wordiness Is Your Enemy

    by  • January 12, 2015 • trademark • 0 Comments

    Lawyers are wordy. Often the wordiness doesn’t matter that much, “I hereby demand that you cease and desist” instead of “you must stop now” both get the point across. But never, ever write a contract that is wordy without a good reason, because that can put you into litigation hell. Defendant 4EverYoung, Ltd., a...

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    Get Those Agreements Signed

    by  • February 10, 2014 • copyright • 0 Comments

    Where a work is a “work made for hire” by virtue of it being specially commissioned, there must be a writing saying so signed by both parties. And it really has to be signed. On July 10, 2010 Zenova signed an agreement to create a website framework for defendant Mobile Methodology, LLC (“MML”). The...

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    Whoa, Harsh

    by  • November 15, 2013 • copyright • 0 Comments

    Not necessarily wrong, but harsh. The outcome is clearly contrary to the contracting parties’ intent, and a third party, an accused infringer, reaps the benefits. Non-party Roman Martinez, Sr. was the author of two songs, Buscando Un Cariño and Morenita de Ojos Negros. On June 5, 1981, he and his band El Grupo Internacional...

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