Tag Archives: trademark

Uncommon sense on the presumptions granted by registration

Posted on June 17, 2019 by

Uncommon, LLC v. Spigen, Inc., No. 18-1917 (7th Cir. Jun. 11, 2019) The PTO has sometimes found “capsule” merely descriptive of cellphone cases, but it also allowed Uncommon to register CAPSULE for such cases in 2013.   (A prior registration for … Continue reading →

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A Celebration of the Work of Wendy Gordon, part 2

Posted on June 14, 2019 by

Harmless Free Riding by Wendy Gordon, Boston University School of Law  (Additional related drafts from Wendy: Time and Intellectual Property After Coaseand Proximate Cause in the Law of Copyright: Linking Liability to Incentives) Common law imposes penalties on those who harm much more readily than … Continue reading →

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photo of competitor’s product not false where it’s indistinguishable; also some design patent functionality

Posted on June 13, 2019 by

Tactical Medical Solutions, Inc. v. KARL 2019 WL 2435859, No. 14 C 06035 (N.D. Ill. Jun. 11, 2019) TMS sued Karl and his sole proprietorship, EMI, for infringement of TMS’s design and utility patents by selling a “knockoff” version of … Continue reading →

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Amicus brief in video game/trademark case

Posted on June 10, 2019 by

With the help of Phil Malone and Alyssa Picard at Stanford’s IP clinic, I and others submitted a law professors’ brief in this case involving Activision’s use of Humvees in depictions of military operations in the Call of Duty games.  AMG … Continue reading →

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Mock magazine cover doesn’t infringe, dilute, advertise falsely even if targeted at competitor

Posted on June 6, 2019 by

Ebony Media Operations, LLC v. Univision Communications Inc., No. 18-cv-11434-AKH (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 3, 2019) Judge Hellerstein called the question presented “interesting,” but an even better adjective would be “easy”: “whether, in the case of a famous magazine trademark, a competitor-magazine … Continue reading →

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Mock magazine cover doesn’t infringe, dilute, advertise falsely even if targeted at competitor

Posted on June 6, 2019 by

Ebony Media Operations, LLC v. Univision Communications Inc., No. 18-cv-11434-AKH (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 3, 2019) Judge Hellerstein called the question presented “interesting,” but an even better adjective would be “easy”: “whether, in the case of a famous magazine trademark, a competitor-magazine … Continue reading →

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major beer battle turns on Mead (Johnson)

Posted on May 31, 2019 by

Long post, lots of stuff to cover in this opinion. MillerCoors, LLC v. Anheuser-Busch Cos., No. 19-cv-218-wmc (W.D. Wisc. May 24, 2019) There’s an apocryphal ad story about a cannery stuck with unmarketable pale salmon that turned its disadvantage around … Continue reading →

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