By Mark McKenna William Patry has an interesting post over at his blog about how courts go about determining substantial similarity in copyright infringement actions. The post resonated with me for a couple of reasons. First, I always have great…
By Eric Goldman Michael Madison gives an interesting account of his experiences drafting local court rules for patent cases. While the idea of creating some incentives for parties to engage in forum-shopping may sound good in theory, I wonder how…
By Eric Goldman Reuters reports that GEICO and Google have settled their lawsuit. This development isn’t particularly surprising given that the judge practically ordered them to settle. The terms of the settlement are confidential, so we can only speculate what…
By Eric Goldman From Kevin Poulson’s Wired story: An entrepreneur registers 800-RED-CROS[S]. He claims to have done so because it has the same number as 800-RED-ARMS, and he was running a business by that name at the time. When he…
By Mark McKenna In another example of trademark enforcement on steroids, we have Monsanto’s recent demand that the author of the Bitter Greens Journal blog stop using Roundup Ready as the header for a series of blog posts. See Overlawyered…
By Mark McKenna In the name of not being left out of the interesting discussion about Snoop Dogg’s trademark lawsuit against Gary Barbera (not to be confused with Hannah Barbara, of Flintstones fame), I thought I would put in my…
By John Ottaviani Eric and I have been debating the claims in the 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg cases, and whether there can be trademark like protection for “speech patterns.” Not surprisingly, as one who likes “non-traditional” trademarks, I am…
By Eric Goldman Broadus v. Gary Barbera Enterprises, Inc. (E.D. Pa. complaint filed Aug. 2005). Ten days ago I blogged about the rapper 50 Cent’s lawsuit against the Gary Barbera dealership for running a car ad that showed a picture…
By Mark McKenna There are several thoughtful posts on other blogs criticizing 8th and 9th Circuits’ recent decisions in Davidson & Associates (d/b/a Blizzard) v. Jung and Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers Ass’n Inc. v. Lexmark International respectively. See here and here…
Macellari v. Carroll, no. 4:05-CV-04161-JPG (S.D. Ill. complaint filed Aug. 31, 2005). Blue Macellari, a student at Duke and Johns Hopkins, has sued a term paper vendor (Rusty Carroll/R2C2, Inc.) operating three websites (doingmyhomework.com, freeforessays.com and freefortermpapers.com) for copyright infringement,…