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IP BLAWG
Big Girls Don’t Cry Over Fact or Fiction
The Jersey Boys is a Broadway musical (the “Play”) about the musical quartet, The Four Seasons (the “Band”). It debuted in 2005 and ran for over 10 years, toured the country repeatedly and was adapted into a movie in 2014.
In the late 1980s, Band member, Tommy DeVito wrote an autobiographical “tell all" book about the Band. The book was ghost-written by Rex Woodard (“the Work”). The Work was completed before the Play had been written and produced.
DeVito’s widow, Donna Corbello, sued Frankie Valli (the Band’s lead singer) and a lot of other people for copyright infringement alleging that the Play was an unauthorized derivative of the Work.
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IP BLAWG
My Blue Ivy is Not the Same as Your Blue Ivy
In 2012, Veronica Morales registered the trademark, BLUE IVY, for her event planning company. Four years later, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s company, BGK Trademark Holdings, LLC filed a trademark application to protect, BLUE IVY CARTER, (named after Beyoncé’s daughter) for entertainment services.
That’s when the fight began.
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Benefits Bulletin
Is Your 401(k) Plan Too Complicated?
Recent cases against university-sponsored retirement plans include allegations that these plans are complicating the investment decisions of participants because the plans offer too many investment choices.
As alleged in one complaint, the plans provide so many options that participants are left with a "virtually impossible burden" of deciding where to invest their retirement funds.
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IP BLAWG
Zoom Smashes Trade Secrets
Discussing confidential or trade secret information through video conferencing platforms can be hazardous to the health of trade secrets.
Smash Franchise Partners, LLC and Smash My Trash LLC operate a mobile trash compaction business. Smash’s trucks compact trash in the customer’s dumpster. This allows the customer to fill the dumpster with more trash and save on waste management fees. Smash sells franchises to entrepreneurs who want to run Smash branded franchises.
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IP BLAWG
Everybody Does It Fails as a Defense
Some of you may recall the argument you used with your parents that went something like “Everyone else gets to go” or “Everyone else’s parents let them [fill in the blank]”. Chances are that these arguments were unsuccessful.
Elie Tahari Ltd. learned that “Everybody does it” doesn’t work in a copyright infringement case either.
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IP BLAWG
Copyright Trolling Hasn’t Died
In 2017, I awarded the grand prize for IP criminals to the disgraced Prenda Law Firm. This stain on the legal profession had created honey pot porn websites and then sued people who downloaded their content for copyright infringement. The lesson of creating your own porn to entice illegal downloads seems to have resonated. But wholesale copyright infringement cases are still out there.
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IP BLAWG
Dueling Embedding Decisions
Embedding is a technical process that allows one website to link to and incorporate content from a second website. So when the user visits the first website, they see the content on the second website even though the content is actually still on the second’s website.
In the past couple of years, there have been two decisions about whether or not embedding is copyright infringement.
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IP BLAWG
When a Friendly Beer Turns Unfriendly
Brooklyn Brewery (“Brewery”) has been around for more than 30 years. Brewery sells craft beers all over the country. Brooklyn Brew Shop (“Brew Shop”) was founded in 2009 and sells beer brewing kits.
In 2010, Brewery started receiving calls from customers trying to reach Brew Shop. So Brewery emailed Brew Shop about it and suggested that Brew Shop “keep an eye on it”.
Apparently, neither side was too worried about customer confusion at that time. Brewery and Brew Shop started collaborating on projects related to beer making, including co-branded beer-making kits, promotional events, books on beer making and educational beer making programs.
It was a match made in beer heaven. Until May 2015.
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IP BLAWG
Booked that Title
Shannon DeVivo, a professional environmental engineer, wanted to encourage women and girls to seek careers in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). So Shannon wrote a series of books titled “The Engirlneers”. The books also invite readers to visit www.engirlneer.com to “Learn how to become an Engirlneer”. The books and the website feature fictional female characters with interests in STEM-related fields.
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IP BLAWG
A Copyright Application is Just a Form. Or is it?
Registering the copyright in a work has a lot of advantages, including establishing ownership, access to federal courts for litigation and the ability to recover statutory damages and attorneys’ fees for infringement. So far so good. But to register a copyright, you have to fill out an application following Copyright Office rules.
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IP BLAWG
“Delivery Failed” Has Been Ghosted
The US Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International held that abstract ideas cannot be patented. Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC (“ECT”) is the one of latest patent holders to feel a ghostly pinch from Alice.
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IP BLAWG
Get Me the One with the Pretty Colors
This blog recently discussed the inability to protect movement during a sightseeing tour as trade dress (“Emotionally Yours”, 6/2/2020). Other types of trade dress can also have problems.
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Benefits Bulletin
Coronavirus Benefits Lawsuits Have Begun
Former participants in a 401(k) profit sharing plan have filed suit in Federal court in New Jersey seeking recovery of investment losses allocated to their accounts by the employer-sponsor.
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IP BLAWG
The Devil is in the Contract Details
Next time you look at a bottle of Listerine, think of it as a lesson in contract drafting.
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IP BLAWG
Hast Thou Forsaken Me Chiclets?
Mondelez International Inc. owns a lot of trademarks. One of them is “Chiclets” for gum. Mondelez almost lost it.
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IP BLAWG
These Are Not the Patent Droids You Are Looking For
The US Patent Office (“USPTO”) has bad news for CP30, R2D2 Wall-E and all of their robot friends. They don’t qualify as an inventor of a patent.
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IP BLAWG
Possession is 9/10ths of Trade Secrets Law
Kevin Huber worked for AFS as a full time sales engineer for Advanced Fluid Systems, a hydraulic systems manufacturer. The Virginia Commonwealth Space Authority awarded a contract to AFS to build, install and maintain a launch pad for a NASA facility. Under the contract, the Space Authority owned the plans created by AFS. The plans were marked as confidential and were considered trade secrets. Three years later, the Space Authority ran into financial difficulty and assigned the Agreement to Orbital Sciences Corporation. So now Orbital owned the trade secrets. But, AFS still had a right to possess them so that it could perform on the agreement.
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IP BLAWG
The Sky Has Its Limits
Retired attorney, Richard Bell, had a cottage industry suing people for copyright infringement of a picture of the Indianapolis skyline. Richard alleged that he took the photo in March 2000 for his law firm’s website. He registered the copyright in 2011, after his former law firm stopped using the photo on its website.
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IP BLAWG
Data Links
HiQ uses an automated application to look at publicly available data on social media and provide analytics to its customers. This is called “data scraping”. Businesses use the data for all sorts of things designed to increase revenue.
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IP BLAWG
Book Your .Com Now
On June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court of the U.S. ended the long battle between Booking.com and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
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IP BLAWG
Bad Spaniel Has First Amendment Rights
VIP Products LLP sells a series of dog toys called “Silly Squeakers”. The toys are often fashioned to look like well-known beverage containers. One of the toys is called “Bad Spaniels”. It looks like a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle but with alterations. Of course, the name was changed from Jack Daniel’s to Bad Spaniels. But it didn’t stop there. Instead of “Old No. 7”, it said “Old No. 2 on your Tennessee Carpet” (which should resonate with dog owners). The alcohol description read 42% POO BY VOL” and “100% SMELLY” (again something instantly recognized by dog owners).
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IP BLAWG
Lucky Shot
Alex Cruz was on his way to visit his girlfriend in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. He heard a commotion, took out his iPhone and took a snap shot. He thought he was just taking a photo of the police subduing a crazy person. What he really caught was a picture of law enforcement taking down a suspected terrorist. Alex shared the photo with a friend who then posted the photo on Instagram.
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IP BLAWG
Sexing for Bovines
Sex predicting technology for bovines is an extremely lucrative business. The revenues are $200 million industry worldwide with about $50 million of that in the USA.
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IP BLAWG
Your Joint or Mine?
The Hard Rock Café’s operating company, JC Hospitality LLC, tried to register the trademark “The Joint” for its casino based music venues. The USPTO refused registration. On appeal, the TTAB affirmed. Hard Rock then appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals who also affirmed the refusal.
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IP BLAWG
Emotionally Yours
A motion trademark is generally considered a type of trademark called “trade dress”. Trade dress protects the visual appearance of a product. Some examples are: (1) the zoom-in view of a female statue at the beginning of every Columbia Pictures' movie (Reg. No. 1,975,999), (2) the "duck march" associated with PEABODY hotels (Reg. No. 2,710,415), and (3) the lighting effects that rotate around the microphone of Apple's SIRI personal assistant and knowledge navigator (Reg. No. 4,471,608).
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