This week, the United States Supreme Court issued an important decision in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com affirming that “Booking.com” is a protectable trademark. This case stemmed from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (“PTO”) rejection of Booking.com’s attempt to register its domain name as a service mark for hotel registration services
The Landscape of Copyright Co-Ownership
An update from Kevin Sandoval, one of the firm’s summer associates:
What started as a copyright infringement claim against the California high school that inspired the television series “Glee” has developed into a conflict that could have ramifications for copyright holders and potential copyright infringers everywhere. In 2016, Tresóna Multimedia, LLC filed a suit against
Copyright for Law Texts Rejected
Following up on an earlier blog post about the State of Georgia’s ability to copyright the annotations to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (“OCGA”), the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighed in last month. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which applied the government edicts doctrine in rejecting Georgia’s infringement challenge against a non-profit
Cancellations at USPTO, PTAB, TTAB, etc.
On Friday, the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it was cancelling all in-person meetings — including all examiner interviews, all meetings between examiners and applicants, and all hearings before the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB). The USPTO noted that parties will receive further
Copyright for Annotations to Legal Text?
During this coming term, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an interesting case involving the State of Georgia’s ability to copyright the annotations to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (“OCGA”). The issue is framed as follows: “Whether the government edicts doctrine extends to—and thus renders uncopyrightable—works that lack the force of law, such as
Immoral & Scandalous Marks Survive
It’s old news by now, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the immoral and scandalous trademark ban set forth in Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act is unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it disfavors certain ideas and thus discriminates based on viewpoint. Practically, this means that the United States Patent and
Bankruptcies Do Not Revoke TM Licenses
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC N/K/A Old Cold LLC case previously blogged about here and here. The issue in that case was whether, when a trademark owner/licensor files for bankruptcy, the licensee of the trademark can legally continue use of the mark
In Adopting the Registration Approach to Copyright Suits, SCOTUS Highlights a Statute of Limitations Issue
SCOTUS has finally resolved the copyright registration debate but in doing so has emphasized a statute of limitations issue of which we should all be aware. This post follows up on my colleague’s prior posts (and here) regarding when a copyright holder can properly file a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §
“Scandalous” Trademarks, and Why They May Become More Prevalent
Of late, multiple authors of this blog have followed the legal landscape around “scandalous” trademarks. In particular, this post follows up on the USPTO’s petition to the Supreme Court, which we previously covered.
A “scandalous” or “immoral” trademark is one which a member of the public would likely find “shocking to the sense of
Cert Granted in TM Bankruptcy Case
As I previously blogged about, there is a circuit split as to whether, when a trademark owner/licensor files for bankruptcy, the licensee of the trademark can legally continue use of the mark or whether the trademark owner/licensor can reject its obligations under the licensing agreement and effectively prohibit the licensee’s continued use of the mark.