Blog Posts: Intellectual Property

If someone has copied or reproduced your book, article, blog, artwork, photograph or other copyright-protected works without your permission, you have several options. Before using any of these options, be sure that you actually own the copyrights to the content that you are reporting. Falsely reporting copyright infringement can be a violation of federal law tha...

Copyrights are a bundle of legal rights belonging to the owner of an original work of authorship. Federal statutes provide that copyright protection subsists in “original works of authorship” that are fixed in any tangible medium of expression. The statute also expressly provides that works of authorship include pictorial works. Original works means that only t...

The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (the “TMA”) was buried in the enormous COVID relief and stimulus bill (i.e., the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021), signed into law on December 27, 2020. The TMA amends federal trademark law in several significant ways of which trademark owners should take note. Rebuttable Presumption of Irreparable Harm. One ...

How important is reputation in your line of work? What is it worth? Does it matter that others associate your company with consistently high-quality goods or services? That your company represents a strong value-add proposition? That your company was easy to work with and exceeded expectations? And how do customers find you? Word-of-mouth? Marketing efforts? Search...

For decades, the Washington Redskins’ name has been the center of controversy, both in federal court and in the court of public opinion. Native American groups have long decried the name as a racial slur and have challenged the name in court and in the media. Until recently, the NFL team stood firm in its defense of the name. In the wake of mass protests against ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Booking.com B.V., the owner of the hotel-reservation website of the same name, is entitled to register the mark BOOKING.COM with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). In doing so, the Court rejected the USPTO’s nearly per se rule that adding “.com” to a generic term can never create a distinctive ...

Caution: Spoilers Ahead. Netflix’s wildly popular documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness continues to capture the imagination of the public as countless media reports and a follow-up Netflix episode chronicle the various developments and characters featured in the show. The true-crime drama highlights various legal missteps of “Tiger King”...

Caution: Spoilers Ahead. Netflix’s documentary series “Tiger King” is currently the number one show on the streaming service and one of the most talked about shows in media. The series explores the peculiar world of private, big-cat zoos and the strange characters that run them. The show centers on an escalating feud between the “Tiger King” Joe Maldonado...

One of the important benefits that come from registering copyrighted works early is the ability to seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees from a copyright infringer in a lawsuit. It is only when copyright owners register their work before copyright infringement begins (or within three months after first publication of that work) that they become eligible for ...

In late 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held Amazon liable as the seller of a third-party's dog collar that broke causing the retractable leash to recoil, hitting and blinding the purchaser in one eye. The court strained to find a remedy for the injured woman when the actual third-party seller of the leash had disappeared. In yet another insta...