The U.S. government has been in a multi-year, multi-indictment quest to acquire the trademarks of the Mongols motorcycle club. You can find the whole complicated background here, but the short version is that, because of improper assignments, the government indicted the wrong party the first time around. So the government is back, this time...
Read more →One of the issues I often write about is what entity, exactly, owns a trademark. As described by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, “feuding members of extended family businesses, aging pop bands, or religious organizations riven by theological schisms” are frequent litigants because trademarks can be adopted with great informality and no documentation....
Read more →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...
Read more →The Ninth Circuit has given us a lesson on unincorporated associations and two different legal concerns when one is involved in a trademark infringement lawsuit: the association’s capacity to own trademarks and to bring a lawsuit for infringement. The plaintiff is the Southern California Darts Association (“SoCal”), which promotes darts competitions and coordinates leagues....
Read more →John Welch at the must-read site The TTABlog published a post about a recent ownership decision, Conolty v. Conolty O’Connor NYC LLC. The gist is that two women started a business without any formal business structure, one of the women, O’Connor, formed the defendant LLC as a single member limited liability company, and the...
Read more →The whole Mongols trademark seizure case is a little confusing, so this story is put together from a few different decisions in two different cases. Two marks, the MONGOLS word mark for “association services, namely, promoting the interests of persons interested in the recreation of riding motorcycles” and the “Image Mark“ for “jackets and...
Read more →The caption tells it all: 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, Inc. v. 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. As explained by the TTAB: Opposers’ pleadings herein contain three grounds for refusing applicant registration: (1) priority and likelihood of confusion; (2) likelihood of dilution; and (3) that applicant is not the rightful...
Read more →Once I did some legal research on unincorporated associations. How do you know when you have one? Is your regular Friday night poker game an unincorporated association? (My aunt played poker with the same people for 50 years – surely that was an unincorporated association.) What about when members change, what happens then? When...
Read more →In Act One of Third Education Group, Inc. v. Phelps, we had Richard Phelps versus Bruce Thompson, an informal partnership that turned sour. In the first decision, the court held that the registration for the mark they were both using, Third Education Group, was void because it was filed in the name of Richard...
Read more →An anonymous commenter to a previous blog post provided a link to today’s opinion finding that the government seizure of the Mongols trademark in United States v. Cavazos was not proper under the RICO statute. You may recall it was widely reported back in October, 2008 that the government had seized the registered trademark...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
© 2013 Pamela S. Chestek. All rights reserved.