More, more, Moore!
One of my favorite ever topics here on LOC has been the litigation brought by the University of Alabama against painter Daniel Moore for unauthorized... Read more
Category: Fair Use
Best of 2010: Trademarks, copyright, brand equity, and rent-seeking: Soapbox 2010
First posted on January 17, 2010. From last week’s INTA Trademark Topics email discussion list. One name has been changed to protect the innocent, and... Read more
Trademark parodies and iconic marks: can foul become fair?
In 2010 I wrote this post about a now-notorious case, eventually ensconced as Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Hyundai Motor America, 2012 WL 1022247 (S.D.N.Y.,... Read more
Fight for your right to parody. Or don’t.
Sometimes, just when a copyright dispute is getting very interesting, the parties go and do the unthinkable: They resolve their differences like reasonable people, and... Read more
“We cannot allow our brand to be abused”
Originally posted on November 13, 2008: “We cannot allow our brand to be abused.” What “brand” is that? The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.... Read more
Update on Lady Voldemort
We first wrote about her lawsuit against a fansite operator here. Sam Bayard has the latest. Originally posted 2011-09-09 10:52:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Read more
Nominative fair use: The Second Circuit names names
Nominative fair use — the “unauthorized” use of a trademark as a trademark specifically to invoke the trademark, as opposed to its “non-trademark” use to... Read more
Best of 2010: An opinion to Di for
First posted on May 5, 2010. I do a lot of bellyaching around here about how there are never any consequences for filing frivolous trademark... Read more
Mooning off into the sunset
The lawsuit by the Naked Cowboy against candymaker Mars has been settled. Terms are undisclosed, the filing of a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice a... Read more
Google using trademark policy to shield MoveOn?
(UPDATED, revised). That’s what Bob Cox is reporting in this story in the Examiner; more here. Google said it would not run anti-MoveOn ads because... Read more
Publishers vs. YouTube
Mack Reed puts his finger on it — almost — in the Online Journalism Review: The Web has made unauthorized propagation of information — whether... Read more
Hormel canned
The evidence shows that “spam,†in addition to being petitioner’s trademark, has a well-recognized meaning as a generic term for unsolicited commercial email; the term isused by consumers, the media, Congress, state legislatures and those who sell solutions for such unwanted email. Thus, it does not have the requisite degree of distinctiveness to support a finding of dilution, at least vis-à -vis respondent’s use of the term as part of the mark SPAM ARREST for computer software designed to eliminate unsolicited commercial email. Read more
The Google Library Project and the dog that didn’t bark — yet
[stextbox id=”info”] This post is the first by a new guest contributor, Utah IP lawyer Nicholas Wells, who also blogs on IP here. I first blogged... Read more
Companies versus their fans
Walter Olson: The famous maker of candies and candy-dispensers is suing the owners of the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Northern California, claiming that... Read more