Priva Technologies didn’t do well in its business. It financed its business, first, by taking a loan and granting a security interest in assets, including in its software, and second, as part of a reorganization, by assigning the improvements in the software to a licensee. Then it shuttered. Who owns the improvements? The original...
Read more →According to McCarthy, “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...
Read more →Oh no, I don’t think so. The Camellia Grill was a New Orleans restaurant that closed in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Various aspects of the business were owned by various entities owned by Michael Shwartz; for our purposes we’ll just refer to them all as “Shwartz.” In August, 2007, Shwartz entered into several agreements...
Read more →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...
Read more →Those who draft patent licenses take note. MDS (Canada), Inc. v. Rad Source Technologies, Inc. is a state court opinion from the Supreme Court of Florida distinguishing an assignment of a patent license from a sublicense. MDS (Canada), now “Nordion,” was a licensee of technology from Rad Source. The license could not be assigned...
Read more →It always gets interesting when an owner has incentive to make inconsistent claims about the same intangible asset in different venues. Say, for example, where you claim that copyrights are part of your deceased spouse’s estate to keep them out of bankruptcy and then try to claim you are the owner for purposes of...
Read more →While I write about all the intellectual property disciplines, I have a soft spot for trademark ownership disputes. And I was, frankly, surprised by today’s case—it was not the outcome I expected when I first started reading. Tammy Goldthorpe filed an application for the mark SLIPPERY WIZARD for asphalt release agent. The application was...
Read more →I have often wondered about the distinction commonly used in photography contracts for “editorial” use. I never quite knew what it meant, but then I’m not a specialist in that industry. Industries have their own terms of art and I figured that everyone who works in photography knows what kind of use crosses the...
Read more →“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” William Goldman, The Princess Bride (1973). I’m starting a new category of posts, about agreements where their wording, upon examination by a court, didn’t manage to do what the parties probably had set out to do. First up...
Read more →I was all stoked because one of the most complicated trademark ownership cases I’ve ever seen, C.F.M. Distributing Co. v. Costantine, was appealed to the Federal Circuit. Super! Clarification from a Court of Appeals on trademark ownership! Sigh. Affirmed under Rule 36 without an opinion. Oral argument here. The text of this work is...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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