Important and Troubling Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) Ruling From First Circuit–Yershov v. Gannett
…far off the mark, at least as to those who deal with video tracking. Eric’s Comments: I’m open-minded about the accuracy of the court’s determination that unique ID + GPS…
Q1 2016 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks and Domain Names)
…because that domain shared a string of characters with a famous or distinctive mark, even if that mark was unregistered…. the Court takes judicial notice that many other common English…
Amazon Defeats Publicity Rights Lawsuit Over ‘A Gronking To Remember’ Book Cover (Forbes Cross-Post)
Wellslogan [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Greg McKenna writes as a woman using the pen name Lacey Noonan. In 2014, McKenna wrote the book “A…
Court Beats Down Another Competitive Keyword Advertising Lawsuit–Beast Sports v. BPI
…and/or the manner in which the mark is used that creates initial interest confusion. In other words, the trademark inquiry should shift to the ad copy, not the ad triggering….
Court Orders Uber To Control Its Google Search Results
…case from 20 years ago. More recently, Jake blogged about an interesting 2012 ruling where the regional trademark owner couldn’t stop the national trademark owner from using the trademark on…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 2 (Patents, Trademarks, Other IP)
…design patent infringement due to its marketplace vendors’ activities. Prior blog post. * Law.com: Facing Tsunami of Cases, Federal Circuit Gives PTAB Wide Berth * Laura G. Pedraza-Farina, “Understanding the…
Are Legal Restrictions On Disparaging Personal Names Unconstitutional?–In re The Slants (Guest Blog Post)
…basis of the mark’s meaning could not be justified. I’ll leave it to others to explore the implications of the court’s holding for other areas of trademark law, including the…
Amazon AppStore and Google Play Defeat Lawsuit Over Infringing App Name–Free Kick Master v. Apple (Forbes Cross-Post)
…mimic the gameplay rules from its video productions. It sued Amazon and Google (and other defendants) for federal trademark infringement and various state law claims. Trademark. The court says everyone…
Hashtags Are Not Trademarks—Eksouzian v. Albanese (Guest Blog Post)
…that the mark formed a “unitary mark” as we defined “unitary mark” in the settlement agreement. Importantly, the settlement agreement adopted the TMEP definition of a unitary mark but added…
Trade School’s Domain Name Lawsuit Drops Like a (Granite) Rock
…over the “nhtradeschool” domain names. Descriptive Trademark. The plaintiff’s purported trademark, “Granite State Trade School,” is a geographic mark, so it requires secondary meaning to achieve distinctiveness. The court repeatedly…