Some companies have an “ignorance is bliss” policy when it comes to reading patents. The belief is that if you don’t read it, you can’t be accused of knowing about it. And if you don’t know about it, you can’t be accused of willfully infringing on the patent. Willful patent infringement can increase or enhance the damages recoverable by a plaintiff. So a lack of willfulness can change the value proposition of prosecuting or defending an infringement suit. But is an ignorance policy a good idea?

Doctor X’s various schemes to deprive employees of their plan benefits reduced their lump sum payments by almost one-half! This could leave a lot more money for Doctor X – who also was a participant in the plan.

Influencers are individuals who have authority, knowledge, a position or a relationship that gives them the power to affect purchase decisions of others. Given the relationship between the number of an influencer’s followers and the influencer’s value, it’s no surprise that an enterprising entrepreneur could help influencers increase the number of their followers.

What can you do if your retirement plan operations don’t square with the provisions of your plan document?

As the holiday season ramps up, a question arises. Can someone own a holiday trademark? Many have tried with various levels of success. The successful registrations don’t try to corner the market on holiday greetings. Here are some examples.

Qualcomm is a leader in the market of wireless chip connectivity that every cell phone needs. Qualcomm holds patents related to 3G, 4G and 5G networking technology as well as other software. Qualcomm demanded a license fee for every device that connects to a cellular network. In other words, all cell phones. It forced its customers, like Apple, to enter into patent license agreements for Qualcomm’s technology; even if the customer was using a chip manufactured by someone else, like Intel.

Luxottica Group S.A. owns the trademark, Ray-Ban, and its subsidiary owns the trademark, Oakley, for sunglasses. According to Luxottica, International Malls’ subtenants were selling counterfeit Ray-Bans and Oakleys. Luxottica sued the landlords for trademark infringement. The landlords defended the action asserting that they aren’t the infringers; their subtenants are.

The New Republic magazine published 44 film reviews written by famed film and theater critic, Stanley Kauffmann. The magazine didn’t hire Kauffmann to write the reviews. He wrote them, submitted them and the magazine printed them. The parties never really talked about who owned the articles. They never entered into a “work for hire” agreement.

USA-Halal entered into a certification license agreement with Best Choice Meats, Inc. As part of the license to use the certification on meats and poultry, Best Choice had to submit monthly production reports to USA-Halal. Three years into the license, Best Choice stopped submitting the reports. USA-Halal terminated the license. Best Choice told USA-Halal that it stopped using the certification mark. Technically, that may have been true. However, Best Choice started using a trademark that looked a lot like the USA-Halal trademark.

TiVo is a television digital recording device (“DVR”). TiVo has search functions that allow the user to search broadcast and streaming television programs and schedule recordings for later viewing. TiVo acquired another company that it spun off as a subsidiary named Veveo. Through the acquisition, Veveo picked up a series of patents, one of which was a digital search system. The patent described the invention as a system for associating characters entered into a search bar with numerical identifiers and linking search targets, such as digital files, with digital combinations. You don’t have to know what that means. Just know that robust search capabilities would allow TiVo to surpass competitors like Comcast.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa granted Bankers Trust’s motion for summary judgment. In doing so, the court determined that the language of the Release was so broad that it included ERISA claims, and that Bankers Trust was protected by the Release as a person “acting on behalf of” Telligen stockholders.

In 2017, Rasta Imposta sued Kmart for copyright infringement because Kmart was selling a virtually identical banana costume (See Blawg Post dated 10/31/2017). The parties settled. Then Rasta Imposta’s competitor, Kangaroo Manufacturing Inc. started selling a substantially similar banana costume. The founder of Kangaroo had once worked for Rasta Imposta and knew that Rasta Imposta had registered the copyright in the banana costume. But Kangaroo manufactured and sold the banana costume anyway.

Service providers for 401(k) and other retirement plans require access to personal data on participants including name, age, address, date of hire, compensation and possibly social security number. This data is necessary to allow plan administrators and recordkeepers to properly allocate plan contributions and earnings to individual participant accounts, to prepare participant statements and for income tax reporting purposes.

Trade secrets have 3 major elements. First, they have to be not generally known or readily ascertainable. Second, the owner of the trade secrets gets economic value from them because they’re not generally known. Third, they have to be the subject of reasonable measures of protection from disclosure.

In two recent cases, trademark holders learned that it was a huge Missed-Steak to sue when puns were involved.

Premier Comp Solutions LLC develops customized panel listings of healthcare providers for workers’ compensation claims. The technology allows employers to contain workers’ compensation costs by ensuring that a chosen healthcare provider complies with local workers’ compensation laws with respect to qualifications, licensing and quality of care. The beauty of the system is that it can be localized by the state where the employee is located. The system was protected as a trade secret.

That’s not a typo. The subject of today’s blog is THE. THE Ohio State University filed an application to register THE for wearing apparel. According to news sources, Ohio State demands to be called “THE Ohio State University”. Ohio State argues that THE is part of its name. Sports and journalists have often commented on Ohio State’s branding insistence calling it stupid, ridiculous, pompous and arrogant. Ohio State responds to these negative comments saying that it has every right to protect its brand.

An application to register tells the Copyright Office about you, your work and why you’re entitled to register a copyright. To further this goal, the Copyright Act requires that you include only accurate information in your copyright application. Gold Value International Textile d/b/a Fiesta Fabrics learned the consequences of not following this rule the hard way.

Retirement plan retention requirements are pretty clear. The retention lapses that do occur both in the Estate of Barton case and in our experience usually result from business acquisitions where the acquiring business either does not receive or fails to retain the “forever” records of the acquired entity. So, any due diligence checklist in a business acquisition should contain a detailed inquiry about the target’s “forever” records. And yes, you can retain your own forever records electronically in accordance with applicable Department of Labor regulations.

As a result of the unprecedented assessment increases to commercial and industrial property values in Cook County, how will lenders deal with the resulting impact on their borrowers' tax liabilities? How will they respond to borrowers who claim they cannot meet their lender's call for substantial upward adjustments in their tax escrows? With regard to income producing properties, what happens when loan to value ratios change due to the decline in market values resulting from the affect of additional property tax expenses on the borrower's NOI. A $50,000 increase in property tax expenses, capped at 7%, could diminish the market value of a property by more than $700,000. It's not always that simple, but a decline in market value is the logical consequence of a higher tax bill for both owner/occupants and landlords. And that leads to an additional line of inquiry as to how tenants, and prospective tenants, will respond to a significant increase in their overall rent coming from these potential increases in their property tax liabilities? Will it, or has it already, caused a slow down in both leasing and sales activity? Will prospective tenants, as well as prospective purchasers and lenders, be taking a more cautious approach to making their final decisions going forward? How will lenders ultimately respond to their increased risk as existing loan to value ratios begin to fluctuate? The typical response would be for them to adjust interest rates upward where possible, to account for the sudden increase in risk, and to work to get their loan to value ratios back in synch. How they choose to accomplish this could have significant consequences for the real estate market.

Matt Furie describes his popular Internet character “Pepe the Frog”, as a “cool, chill frog dude”. Celebrities like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj have published Pepe the Frog memes.* Online message boards posts fan art featuring Pepe the Frog and calling them “rare Pepes”. Pepe the Frog’s Internet popularity turned into a financial windfall for Matt.

New Trier Township is located in Cook County, IL. The entire township was subject to a reassessment in 2019. The Assessor opened the township for appeals on April 29 2019. The Assessor then certified the final assessments for all real estate in the township on August 15, 2019, meaning that he had completed his work for the year and closed his books.

The Assessor proposed a 2019 market value of approximately $1,744,000 for a property. The party purchased the property for approximately $1,150,000 at the end of 2018 in an arm's length, brokered transaction. The evidence tendered in support of the appeal included the following documents:

Acacia Communications got tired of paying a license fee to Viasat, Inc. for trade secret protected technology. So Acacia supposedly created replacement technology. The problem? Acacia used Viasat’s trade secrets.

Legislative concerns about 401(k) participants who are financially unprepared for retirement has resulted in a number of specific provisions intended to encourage participants to save more. Those provisions include tax credits for small businesses that include automatic enrollment provisions in their 401(k) plans, expanded availability of multiple employer plans, 401(k) eligibility for tenured part-time employees, postponed start date for required minimum distributions from age 70½ to 72, and penalty free participant withdraws of up to $5,000.00 upon the birth or adoption of a child.