There is a division among panelists whether high volume registrants in the pay-per-click (“PPC”) landing page business should be held to a higher standard for vetting their acquisitions. The PPC business was not dreamed of in the UDRP foundation... Read More
by Donna Ray Berkelhammer If you work with startups as I do, one of the first issues is choosing the company or product name. I have worked with countless marketing companies that advised their clients to "be descriptive" when selecting... Read More
A recent article in the New York Law Journal caught my attention for an interesting development in examination of eco-mark applications in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We’ve known for some time that marks containing terms such as... Read More
In G&W Laboratories, Inc. v. G W Pharma Limited, 2009 TTAB LEXIS 2 (January 29, 2009) , GW Pharma (Pharma) filed a trademark application, and an opposition was commenced by G&W Laboratories (Labs), which owned multiple-class trademark registrations... Read More
By: Rosa Margarita Santacruz and Germán Marín The Colombian government has approved the adhesion of Colombia to the mentioned Madrid Protocol, by means of law 1455 of June 29, 2011, which shall enter into force upon the exhaustion... Read More
by Elizabeth Papendorp The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB or the Board), an adjudicatory division of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, issued a decision on June 18, 2014 cancelling six trademark registrations previously granted... Read More
In re Bose Corp ., 580 F.3d 1240 (Fed. Cir. 2009) overruled the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's (TTAB) opinion in Medinol v. Neuro Vasx, Inc ., 2003 TTAB LEXIS 227 (Trademark Trial & App. Bd. May 13, 2003) , which held that, when determining... Read More
By Steven Abreu , a member of our Trademark Practice Group U.S. trademark applications are matters of public record. When celebrity super-couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé filed a trademark application for their infant daughter's name, Blue Ivy... Read More
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) offers both pre-trial final disposition on the merits, or abbreviated trial on the merits, of inter partes cases via Accelerated Case Resolution (ACR). TTAB claims greater flexibility for inter partes proceedings... Read More
By Ashlee Froese of Keyser Mason Ball LLP For the first time since 2006, the Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") has issued a decision on trade-marks law ( Masterpiece Inc v Alavida Lifestyles Inc. 2011 SCC 27 [ enhanced version available to... Read More
There is some curious eco-mark news to report: apparently, last month General Motors filed two notable U.S. trademark applications, one for BOLT and the other for CHEVROLET BOLT. They are Application Nos. 86357513 and 86357523 (BOLT Applications),... Read More
By Brian P. Gregg Investing in a trademark registration is becoming the only effective means for defending a brand online at relatively modest costs. Business owners who do not own federal registration for their trademarks are seeing their ability... Read More
by Cynthia Lambert Hardman , Scott Forman , and Anne E. Li Summary: CAFC finds appeal of Board’s decision to cancel trademark registration moot. Case: Cigar King, LLC v. Corporacion Habanos, S.A. , No. 2013-1531 (Fed. Cir. May 23, 2014) (non... Read More
by Chris Mackenzie Last week, the U.S. District Court sitting in Alexandria, Virginia granted what would appear to be a sweeping victory to a group of five Native Americans who have renewed attempts to cancel the federal registrations of certain trademarks... Read More
by Julia Bishop Eastern District Court Judge Lee upheld the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB) decision to cancel several REDSKINS trademark registrations. Pro-Football, Inc. v. Amanda Blackhorse et al. , No. 1:14-cv-01043-GBL-IDD... Read More