Crowdsourced Content in Video Games: How Ownership Issues Almost “Ganked” a Copyright Case - In Blizzard Entertainment v. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Company, a federal court denied a motion for partial summary judgment for...more
Just Google it. Can you Google the score? Have you Googled the restaurant’s reviews? These are all common phrases in today’s internet-reliant society, and it’s entirely due to the creation of Google and its widespread...more
Death by genericide is a painful way to go, for trademarks that is. When the public comes to think of a trademark as the common word for a product or service -- as opposed to identifying its exclusive source -- the trademark...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit made a point to remind trademark litigants of the relevant laws and policies pertaining to trademark “genericide” when it sustained summary judgment in favor of ubiquitous search...more
Domain name registration is usually a good first step to cement trade name and mark ownership. In a previous blog we reminded readers that possession, even in Intellectual Property matters, is nine-tenths of the law...more
In a well-reasoned opinion, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that the GOOGLE trademark has not suffered death by genericide – even if the public uses it as a verb for searching the Internet. The case before...more