joint ownership
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Assigning a Trademark Claim
Plaintiff Delta Medical Systems, Inc. co-owned a trademark registration for NITREX for “medical gloves” with Delta Hospital Supply, Inc. and Delta Medical Supply Group, Inc. Delta Medical sued defendant DRE Health Corp. for trademark infringement. You may have seen this coming: DRE Health Corp. filed a motion to dismiss that the two other co-owners of […] Continue reading
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Foreign Manufacturer Continues to Own Its Mark
Liger6, LLC v. Sarto is right in my wheelhouse, two claimants to the same mark. I passed on it at the district court level, though, because it wasn’t particularly remarkable. However, there is a decision on appeal now, and it’s a slow news week for non-Covid news. The district court opinion is marked “Not for […] Continue reading
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How to Steal a Trademark
Progressive Emu, Inc. v. Nutrition & Fitness, Inc. is mostly a dispute about paying for emu oil, but there’s also a trademark claim involved. In 2000 Progressive Emu began developing an emu oil pain cream and added blue coloring to it, “thus birthed ‘Blue Emu.’” Nutrition & Fitness (NFI) was then “brought on board to […] Continue reading
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That’s Not How It Works
There is a common misperception that one can somehow grab rights by filing a trademark application. It just doesn’t work that way in the United States. Today’s schooling is from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Entertainingly, one party, Alvin Reed, Sr., is both petitioner and respondent (for a registered trademark) and opposer and applicant […] Continue reading
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The Exemplar Case For Why Joint Trademark Ownership is Bad
According to McCarthy, “[w]hen there is a dispute over who owns a trademark, the worst possible solution is to allow mark ownership to be shared among the warring parties.” That is in the lastest opinion on the the YOGI marks, which I’ve written about many, many, many times before. The cases revolve around the rights […] Continue reading
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Infringement Without Confusion?
It’s a simple case, but simple doesn’t mean you get to take shortcuts on the legal rationale. At the end of 1998 Ford and ThermoAnalytics entered into a License Agreement for RadTherm software for heat mapping. In the agreement, FGTI (Ford Global Technologies, Inc.) granted ThermoAnalytics an exclusive license to develop and commercialize “FGTI Licensed […] Continue reading
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Jurisdiction Over a Patent Ownership Claim
Predator International, Inc. v. Gamo Outdoor USA, Inc. is a Tenth Circuit decision involving a patent infringement claim. PatentlyO reports on the appellate posture, explaining why the appeal ended up at the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rather than the Federal Circuit. But I’m more interested in the ownership aspect of it. The […] Continue reading
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You Can’t Sue the Co-Owners of Your Trademark
It seems like a simple concept, maybe so simple it isn’t litigated much. You can’t sue the co-owner of your trademark. It’s a band name case (what else?), over “Get the Led Out,” a cover band of Led Zepplin. In 2002 Plaintiff Paul Piccari conceived of the idea to form a band and thought up […] Continue reading
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The Drifters, Yet Again
One thing that’s sure to make my eyes roll back into my head is the word “Drifters” in a case caption. Westlaw has 13 cases listed, 8 federal, 3 state and 2 TTAB. Now the TTAB has had another crack at it, including looking at evidence that goes all the way back to the very […] Continue reading
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