On May 18, 2023, the US Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit’s decision that artist Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portrait of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of musician Prince, used for a Vanity Fair cover, was not a fair use...more
Last week the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Unicolors, Inc. v. H & M Hennes & Mauritz, LP, which considers when inaccuracies in a US copyright application can be used to invalidate a resulting registration.
The case...more
The Supreme Court finds that a “generic.com” mark can be a protectable trademark if there is evidence that consumers recognize it as a source indicator, i.e., the mark has achieved secondary meaning in association with the...more
7/7/2020
/ Acquired Distinctiveness ,
Appeals ,
Booking.com ,
Domain Name Registration ,
Generic Marks ,
Lanham Act ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
United States Patent and Trademark Office v Booking.com BV ,
USPTO
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with fashion brand Lucky Brand Dungarees, Inc. (LB) resolving its decades-old dispute with Marcel Fashion Group, Inc. (Marcel).
The victory came on technical...more
Is a plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit required to show that a defendant willfully infringed the plaintiff’s trademark as a precondition to an award of defendant’s profits?
This is an important, age-old, yes-or-no...more
4/30/2020
/ § 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
The Supreme Court has stricken a federal statute that abrogated a State’s immunity from copyright infringement lawsuits. The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA) provided that States “shall not be immune, under...more
4/7/2020
/ Abrogation ,
Authors ,
Congressional Intent ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Copyright Ownership ,
Copyright Remedy Clarification Act ,
Eleventh Amendment ,
Fourteenth Amendment ,
SCOTUS ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
State and Local Government
On Monday, the Supreme Court held that the ban on “immoral or scandalous” trademarks was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Court found that, as with the recently struck down ban on “disparaging” marks, the ban...more
7/1/2019
/ Appeals ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Iancu v. Brunetti ,
Lanham Act ,
Reaffirmation ,
Reversal ,
Scandalous/Immoral Marks ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO ,
Viewpoint Discrimination