I have called Righthaven the gift that keeps on giving. In Righthaven, the plaintiff tried to obscure the fact that there wasn’t a true copyright assignment by putting the relevant terms in different agreements. Righthaven, a copyright troll, eventually got whacked for it by the 9th Circuit. Now, when defendants see any kind of...
Read more →In December, 2010, plaintiff Dominion Assets assigned its patents to non-party Acacia Patent Acquisition, LLC, a subsidiary of the notorious non-practicing entity Acacia Research Corp., for Acacia to monetize. Below is the operative assignment language: If you can’t read the image, it says: Effective immediately upon the date of Acceptable Completion as set forth...
Read more →I’ve written before (recursive link) about copyright registrations by photo agencies. Rather than individual photographers registering their own works, it is common practice for a photo agency to periodically register the works of many photographers en masse. As described in a recent 9th Circuit opinion, the process was created collaboratively by a photography trade...
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 →Short and to the point from the Federal Circuit: a reversion of the assignment of a patent as a remedy for a breach of contract claim does not give the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit jurisdiction to hear the appeal. Appeal transferred to the Fourth Circuit. Patently-O gives you the details here....
Read more →The saga over the use of Walter Mercado’s name and likeness, trademark, and copyrighted content goes on and on and on … Suits in two different jurisdictions, Florida and Puerto Rico, and one appeal so far. What’s interesting to me about the case is that Walter Mercado unequivocally assigned the WALTER MERCADO trademark to...
Read more →I previously blogged about a case, Salba Corp. v. Ralston, where there were two different owners of SALBA-formative marks. Salba Corp. owned the trademark SALBA (a varietal of chia seed) and the Ralstons then assigned their SALBASMART and SALBA BALANCE marks to Salba Corp. with a license back and a reversion if Salba Corp....
Read more →Walter Mercado can’t get a break – but then he’s trying to fight two separate district court decisions that both went against him. Odds in the appeals court were slim and he didn’t beat them. The dispute is over an agreement between Mercado, an astrologer, and Bart Enterprises International Ltd., a company to which...
Read more →Thanks to Bill Bryner at Kilpatrick Stockton for a report on a recent 4th Circuit decision. It’s about copyright and furniture, which leads to discussion of some of the more unusual intellectual property legal theories. I’m interested in the challenge to ownership of the copyright in the furniture designs. In 1994, a predecessor company,...
Read more →For me, Ralston v. Salba Corp. was one of those “whoops, keep an eye out for that next time” kind of cases. Note to self – in the future, check for a reversionary right in the property being licensed. Plaintiffs William and Richard Ralston and Great Western Tortilla Co., a company that had been...
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