In Vidal v. Elster, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act, which prohibits the registration as a trademark or service mark of any “name, portrait, or signature identifying a...more
Kilpatrick partner Ted Davis spoke recently at the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s spring meeting and at the International Trademark Association’s annual meeting on recent developments in United States...more
Kilpatrick partner Ted Davis spoke recently at the New York State Bar Association IP Section Annual Meeting on recent developments in United States trademark and unfair competition law.
The following are highlights from...more
Kilpatrick Townsend partner Ted Davis spoke recently at the annual meeting of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada concerning recent trademark decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.
...more
In Great Concepts Management Group v. Chutter, Inc., the Federal Circuit entertained an appeal from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s cancellation of a federal registration based on the registrant’s filing of an...more
I. Introduction -
In Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic Int’l, Inc., the Supreme Court adopted a restrictive rule governing extraterritorial applications of the federal Lanham Act. In doing so, the Court rejected the...more
I. Introduction -
The test for trademark and service mark infringement first set forth in Rogers v. Grimaldi, has played an increasingly significant role in challenges to the titles and contents of creative works since...more
6/16/2023
/ Dilution ,
First Amendment ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Jack Daniels Properties Inc v VIP Products LLC ,
Lanham Act ,
Likelihood of Confusion ,
Parody ,
Rogers Test ,
SCOTUS ,
Trade Dress ,
Trademark Infringement ,
Trademark Litigation ,
Trademarks
Kilpatrick Townsend's Ted Davis recently spoke at the Federal Bar Association's IP Law Fall Conference 2022 on the topic of "Petitions for Expungement or Reexamination and Other Aspects of the Trademark Modernization Act."...more
Kilpatrick Townsend Partner Ted Davis recently spoke at the New York Intellectual Property Association. He discussed "Combatting Misrepresentations in the Trademark Prosecution and Maintenance" during the Hot Topics in...more
Kilpatrick Townsend’s Ted Davis recently spoke at the New York Intellectual Property Association at its “Hot Topics in Trademark and Copyright Law” seminar. Mr. Davis presented on “Combating Misrepresentations in Trademark...more
Kilpatrick Townsend’s Ted Davis recently presented his “Annual Review of U.S. Federal Case Law and TTAB Developments” at the International Trademark Association (INTA) annual meeting. Mr. Davis provided a concise analysis of...more
I. Introduction -
On December 27, 2020, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) became law after it passed Congress and was signed by the President as part of the year-end Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021....more
1/12/2022
/ Ex Partes Reexamination ,
Expungement ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Lanham Act ,
Trademark Application ,
Trademark Cancellation ,
Trademark Modernization Act (TMA) ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO
At the recent Kilpatrick Townsend annual Trademark Seminar, Ted Davis discussed recent Supreme Court activity in cases bearing on trademark rights, including the Court’s opinions on the availability of accountings of...more
Kilpatrick Townsend partner Ted Davis and senior counsel Chris Bussert recently presented an audio seminar for West/Thomson Reuters. The title of the seminar was The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020: What Practitioners...more
Introduction -
On December 27, 2020, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) became law after it passed Congress and was signed by the President as part of the year-end Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021.1 The...more
At the recent INTA 2020 Annual Meeting, Kilpatrick Townsend’s Ted Davis delivered an analysis of major decisions rendered by the U.S. courts and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) over the past 12 months.
Key...more
On June 30, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the potential registrability in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) of a claimed trademark or service mark consisting of a generic word and a generic top-level domain...more
7/23/2020
/ Acquired Distinctiveness ,
Appeals ,
Booking.com ,
Domain Name Registration ,
Domain Names ,
Generic Marks ,
Lanham Act ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
United States Patent and Trademark Office v Booking.com BV ,
USPTO
For years, the federal courts of appeals have been split on an issue of critical importance to litigants under the Lanham Act, namely, whether a prevailing plaintiff seeking an accounting of the defendant’s profits under...more
4/24/2020
/ § 1125(a) ,
§ 1125(c) ,
Appeals ,
Burden of Proof ,
Charge-Filing Preconditions ,
Compensatory Awards ,
Dilution ,
Lanham Act ,
Lost Profits ,
Remand ,
Remedies ,
Romag Fasteners v Fossil ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Infringement ,
Trademark Litigation ,
Trademarks ,
Vacated ,
Willful Infringement
Kilpatrick Townsend partner Ted Davis recently presented his “Annual Review of Key Trademark & Unfair Competition Opinions” at the firm’s 2019 Advanced Trademark Law Seminar in San Francisco.
Key takeaways from the...more
Section 35 of the Lanham Act affords a prevailing plaintiff the opportunity to recover several types of monetary relief. These include awards of the plaintiff’s own actual damages, statutory damages, the possibility of...more
At the 2019 Atlanta Kilpatrick Townsend Intellectual Property Seminar (KTIPS), Ted Davis and co-presenter
Maria Baratta discussed recent trademark prosecution and case law updates.
...more
On January 4, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari filed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in Iancu v. Brunetti. The USPTO seeks to overturn the Federal Circuit’s ruling that the prohibition on...more
1/10/2019
/ Certiorari ,
Disparagement ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Iancu v. Brunetti ,
Lanham Act ,
Scandalous/Immoral Marks ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO
In Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court held that a portion of Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act prohibiting the federal registration of potentially disparaging trademarks and service marks violated the Free Speech Clause of the...more
6/21/2017
/ Disparagement ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Lanham Act ,
Matal v Tam ,
Music Industry ,
SCOTUS ,
The Slants ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO