• Posts Tagged ‘standing’

    STOLICHNAYA Case Still Alive, Just Barely

    by  • September 9, 2014 • trademark • 0 Comments

    Oh, Federal Treasury Enterprise Sojuzplodoimport, without you I wouldn’t be so good at spelling “Stolichnaya.”* I’ve lost count of the opinions talking about who owns the STOLICHNAYA trademark and we’re now on the second lawsuit over it. It all stems from a disputed claim of ownership of the STOLICHNAYA mark in the United States....

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    The Photography Suits In a Nutshell

    by  • July 8, 2014 • copyright • 1 Comment

    I’ve been writing for some time (recursive link) about numerous lawsuits between photographers, or their agencies, and textbook publishers that have used photographs in excess of what they originally licensed for their books. Mostly I’ve been writing about challenges to standing, which are early in the cases on a motion to dismiss. But some...

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    Joinder of an Unwilling Co-owner

    by  • June 30, 2014 • patent • 0 Comments

    On the left we have a disinterested patent owner; there was a mixup about the status of an inventor, Bruce Draper, so he assigned his rights in what ultimately became the ‘321 patent to the University of New Mexico (UNM) rather than his employer, Sandia. UNM realized the mistake and assigned to Sandia “those...

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    Righthaven, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

    by  • June 25, 2014 • copyright • 1 Comment

    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...

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    The Role of a Board of Directors

    by  • June 23, 2014 • patent • 0 Comments

    I don’t write much about patent ownership because there just isn’t a lot of interesting stuff going on. There are two major ways it goes wrong for a plaintiff: there is a missing patent owner uncovered or the conveyance assigned less that all rights to the plaintiff. These two situations are litigated so commonly...

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    Why There Are Nonprecedential Decisions

    by  • May 14, 2014 • patent • 0 Comments

    When we last visited Taylor v. Taylor Made Plastics, Inc., the trial court held that the spouse of the inventor acquired a legal ownership interest in the inventor’s patent in the divorce. I was a bit surprised; the language in the divorce was this: The Court finds that the proceeds from the production of...

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    A Post-Lexmark Clarification for Patents

    by  • May 7, 2014 • patent • 0 Comments

    Here’s a little soupçon of a decision, a teaching moment from the Federal Circuit. It’s an easy fact pattern: a patent is in an inter partes reexamination, after the case has been fully briefed the patent owner assigns the patent, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejects the claims, and the former owner appeals...

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    It’s Not That Hard

    by  • March 14, 2014 • copyright • 2 Comments

    It’s not a hard concept—to bring a copyright infringement lawsuit you have to own a copyright. Nevertheless, getting that right seems to be a challenge sometimes. Today’s version of the challenge is ownership of the copyrights for works created by Earl Vernon Biss, Jr., who died in 1998 – here is his biography on...

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