The Briefing: The Supreme Court Limits the Reach of The Lanham Act [PODCAST]
Emerging Strategies for Protecting Global IP Rights
Patent Series: Protecting inventions
Video Game Lawsuit Highlights Intellectual Property Issues with Internet Memes
Harlem Shake's Copyright Issues
Apple Loses First 'Big' Case to MobileMedia, Lawyer Says
Copyright Safe Harbors: Establishing Protection Against Infringement Claims
When developing a new brand or product, creatives often give considerable attention to avoiding intellectual property infringement. Trademark lawyers are similarly vigilant to avoid infringing another company’s mark. However,...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a district court’s stay of a permanent injunction against copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation, permitting the infringer to continue use of an...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district court’s award of statutory damages where the defendant knowingly distributed a photograph without first getting permission to use the photograph. Gregory...more
In the age of COVID-19 and social distancing, people and businesses are turning to technology to engage with their communities. Fitness instructors are leading workouts via Instagram Live. Churches are offering live-streamed...more
In the music world, performance rights organizations (“PROs”) serve an intermediary function between songwriters and music publishers and third parties who perform the protected works publicly. Among the largest PROs in the...more
The Counterfeit Goods Seizure Act of 2019 aims to close a loophole in the current law and provide U.S. Customs the authority to seize counterfeit goods infringing design patents....more
Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) nearly two decades ago seeking to balance the needs of two factions: Content creators, who were struggling to protect their intellectual property in the digital...more
In the latest chapter of a year-long battle between an individual inventor and two companies, Lisa Duer (“Duer”), a resident of Woodstock, Georgia, filed her Third Amended Complaint alleging patent infringement, trademark...more
"Wild Thing" Forced to Tap Out in Battle against ESPN - Last month, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals forced former professional wrestler Steve "Wild Thing" Ray to tap out in his battle against ESPN by dismissing the...more
Is it stealing to take data without permission from a public website, or is it simply making use of resources that are made available to you? “Web scraping” or “screen scraping” is the practice of extracting large amounts of...more
Canada’s new Combating Counterfeit Products Act officially took effect on January 1, 2015. As part of the ongoing overhaul of Canada’s much neglected intellectual property regime, this new tool for content and brand...more
Professor Nimmer once identified the “weakest infringement claims of all time” as those involving attempts by copyright holders to prevent their copyrighted work from being used as evidence against them in court. “It seems...more
About a year ago, we wrote about the final chapter in the copyright saga of Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston University student who was found liable for copyright infringement by a District of Massachusetts jury, based on his...more
In the coming months, authors of copyrighted materials may begin resurrecting long buried works and asserting infringement claims against current users. The doctrine of laches — a plaintiff’s unreasonable delay in bringing...more
In This Issue: - CJEU Holds ISPs May be Ordered to Block Customer Access to Websites Infringing Copyright - European Trade Mark and Design Network Issues Common Communication On Black and White Marks -...more
Copyright Claims Based on Submission of Prior Art to Patent Office Finally Dismissed: Were They The “Weakest Infringement Claims of All Time”? In April 2012, we reported on four copyright lawsuits filed by the American...more
Copyright disputes could soon outnumber patent infringement matters in the United States. This marks a significant shift, and stands poised to re-shape the IP litigation landscape....more
The Supreme Court recently addressed the approach to assessment of copyright infringement in the case of Cinar Corporation v Robinson, 2013 SCC 73, and thereby provided some important guidance to courts facing similar...more
Last week the story du jour in the zany world of entertainment law blogging was actor Shia LaBeouf’s foray into film-making with his short film HowardCantour.com. It is now internet gospel that Mr. LaBeouf’s film blatantly...more
Copyright - ..Court of Appeal Confirms High Court Decision and Finds no Copyright Infringement in Software With Same Functionality: In SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 1482 (21 November...more
With the short Thanksgiving week, I thought we would touch on a few interesting stories developing over the last couple of weeks. Photographer gets $1 million+ verdict from AFP and Getty for copied Twitpics - In...more
An action for declaratory and injunctive relief to establish the rights of a toy company, GoldieBlox, in connection with a parody video set to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls.”...more
On Friday, November 8, 2013, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which comprises Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, affirmed a $3.2 million damages award for copyright infringement in favor of...more
Obviousness-Type Double Patenting May Exist When There Is Neither Common Ownership nor Common Inventorship - Addressing an obviousness-type double patenting rejection, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit...more