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.