The US Supreme Court won’t be weighing in on some interesting cases in the world of IP. Here are just a few of them by topic:
Copy

• rights in Fictional Characters
• Right to Challenge Patents
• Trademarks

In Brief:  Copyright does not protect “useful articles” and design patents don’t always protect against infringement.

Sidewalk chalk has been around a long time. Lanard Toys Ltd. designed chalk holders that looked like No. 2 pencils. Lanard sold the chalk holders to distributors and toy store chains like Toys R Us.  Lanard sought and obtained both a registered copyright and a design patent.

Most people are familiar with Apple Inc. and its apple logo. Apple Inc. and its products are ubiquitous and pervasive. At any time, a person can be wearing one of their watches, talking on one of their phones and watching a video on one of their tablets.

PrePear is a new app that allows the user to save and organize recipes, create meal plans, shop efficiently for food and prepare healthy foods. PrePear adopted a pear logo, which makes sense considering the pun in the name. When PrePear sought to register its pear logo as a trademark, USPTO’s Examining Attorney didn’t see a likelihood of confusion between the pear logo and any other logo. The Examining Attorney cleared the application for publication.

Then, Apple filed an opposition.

Courts are now sorting out who is responsible when an impostor diverts a participant's retirement funds with fraudulent distribution requests.

Can the employer, as the plan sponsor, be held responsible when an outside service provider honors a suspicious distribution request?

One federal court recently dismissed such a case against the employer because the plan's website provider was alleged to have processed and authorized a fraudulent online distribution request without adequate participant confirmation. However, employers are plan fiduciaries with a duty to select and monitor the performance of plan service providers. This opens the door to potential claims against employers for their alleged failure to pick service providers with adequate cyber security practices - even if the employer's own data systems are secure and well maintained.

What should an employer do about this?

In Brief:  Always investigate when a new hire says they own proprietary information.

For almost four years, comics’ legend, Ty Templeton, and Star Trek’s “Trouble with Tribbles Episode” writer, David Gerrold and their company, ComicMix, have been in litigation with the Dr. Seuss Estate. ComicMix is trying to publish a graphic comic called “Oh, The Places You'll Boldly Go.” The comic mashed Dr. Seuss’ “Oh The Places You’ll Go” with Star Trek characters. ComicMix said it was fair use. The Dr. Seuss Estate said no.

In 1976, the Copyright Act was completely overhauled. The system of protecting copyrights changed giving longer protection and making it easier to claim a copyright. But pretty much all of the pre-1976 works were going to be treated differently. So the Copyright Act grandfathered in and extended the protection for these pre-1976 works. Originally, works created in 1923 or before were still in the public domain. On January 1, 2021, any works created from 1925 went into the public domain.

Pocky is a cookie stick that comes in several flavors including chocolate or strawberry. The cookie was first produced in Japan in 1966. Pocky’s manufacturer, Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd. can boast of world-wide popularity for its cookie sticks.

Lotte International America Co., decided to get into the cookie stick game. It came out with its own version called Pepero. There’s no question that the Pepero cookie stick is identical to the Pocky cookie stick.

Ezaki Glico sued Lotte International for trade dress infringement in New Jersey district court. 

In past years, we have awarded Crippys to those who achieved infamy by committing Intellectual Property crimes over the last year. Here are the winners of the 2020 Crippys.

At least two pending federal cases deal with attacks on individual 401(k) plan accounts. The fact patterns are similar: a participant submits an electronic benefit withdrawal request to the employer or the plan's record keeper. The request is passed on to the plan's custodian for implementation.

The custodian, as holder of the plan assets, then transfers the requested funds to the participant's bank account This is a routine transaction and the distribution has been implemented as intended.

So what is the problem?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Next time you look at a bottle of Listerine, think of it as a lesson in contract drafting.

Mondelez International Inc. owns a lot of trademarks. One of them is “Chiclets” for gum. Mondelez almost lost it.