In 2021, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled Great Concepts, LLC’s trademark registration for the mark DANTANNA’S for restaurant services under Section 14, after finding that counsel for the Registrant committed...more
Thank you for reading the October 2023 issue of Sterne Kessler's MarkIt to Market® newsletter. This month, we discuss the Federal Circuit’s recent case considering the scope of the USPTO’s authority to cancel registrations...more
For 48 years, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has held that if a trademark registrant files a fraudulent declaration under Section 15 of the Lanham Act to make its...more
On Wednesday, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision reversing the USPTO’s cancellation of a registered trademark (Great Concepts, LLC v. Chutter, Inc., No. 2022-1212). As detailed in the...more
Last fall, the maker of BLUE GOO pain relief products filed a trademark infringement lawsuit over a competitor’s GREEN GOO pain relief salve.[1] Trademark litigation can be long and costly. But the Court quickly dismissed...more
Twelve years after the Federal Circuit’s landmark In re Bose decision on fraud, the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) has answered one of the questions not reached by Bose: whether reckless disregard of the truth...more
This alert covers the current law on stranger-originated life insurance (“STOLI”) policies in 14 different states and includes updates concerning the following developments: • A 2020 decision applying New York law which...more
In Salopek v. Zurich Am. Life Ins. Co., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46857 (D. N.M. March 18, 2020), a New Mexico district court affirmed an insurer's rescission of an individual life insurance policy based on material...more
In a previous Legal Update, we discussed how COVID-19 would likely provide a basis for claiming excusable nonuse of a trademark. A related issue is whether a pandemic-related interruption in use of a trademark could delay the...more
In a June 8, ruling in AEI Life v. Lincoln Benefit Life Co., the Second Circuit upheld the District Court for the Eastern District of New York’s application of New York’s two-year incontestability period to a STOLI policy....more