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The Subsidiary Standing In
Lately we’ve been seeing an increasing number of trademark cases that revolve around the relative rights of different members of the same enterprise: a family of companies asserting a family of marks theory in Wise F&I v. Allstate Ins. Co., different chapters of the Salvation Army allowed to register similar trademarks in In re The… Continue reading
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Fifteen Years Later
Almost 15 years ago I published an article about the then-common practice of creating a wholly-owned subsidiary to be an “IP holding company.” It was a tax strategy, where royalty payments, an expense to the parent, would be made to a subsidiary in a jurisdiction that didn’t tax the income on royalties. I don’t take… Continue reading
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You Have to Own the Copyright
Short and sweet: after seven years of litigation, partial summary judgment, and an award against the defendant for $100,000, the court vacated it all because, a year after the award, the defendant’s new lawyer noticed the plaintiff didn’t actually own the copyrights, its subsidiaries did. In light of the recently unearthed determination that Plaintiff lacks… Continue reading
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Does the Parent Own the Mark?
The TTABlog reports on a decision invoking In re Wella to try to escape a likelihood of confusion refusal. In re Wella is a 1986 Federal Circuit decision which held that corporate family members (in that case, parent and subsidiary) may own substantially similar marks without a likelihood of confusion so long as there is… Continue reading
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