A while back, I wrote about two big cases that involved an attempt to register trademarks that some people considered offensive or defamatory. The first involved “The Slants,” a band made up of Asian-American musicians who were deliberately attempting to take...
Back in October, I wrote about how a number of famous authors were banding together to file a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement. Novelists, of course, are not the only creatives who believe they are being negatively impacted by artificial intelligence...
How can a company go to court to defend its trade secrets without discussing those secrets publicly? The answer: with difficulty and a lot of motions to file sealed documents. This is why trade secret cases are so rare and such a big deal when companies decide to file...
Gratitude is an attitude we learn to appreciate as we grow older and realize how beautiful life is. I am incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to travel to Houston, TX the week before Thanksgiving to attend the International Trademark Association (INTA)...
If you like something that your competitor has created, should you ever tell your team to directly copy it? Based on the outcome of an infringement case involving two door-to-door storage companies, you could get into some real copyright trouble if your marketing...
Between a larger company and a smaller company, if you were asked to predict who would be more careful about their trademark application – who would you pick? You might expect that a larger company would have greater access to legal resources, and would therefore have...
Let this be a lesson to anyone producing creative works who decides to deem them a “collection.” Examples of this might include: musicians releasing an album, writers compiling essays or short stories into a single book, and visual artists placing multiple works in a...
I will start this blog post with a simple trademark law fact: If you write a book, you are not allowed to register a trademark for the name of that book. Given that, perhaps you wonder how a person would arrive at the question: "But can I register a trademark for a...