Defense Preclusion Must "Slim-Fit" into Either Collateral Estoppel or Res Judicata.

The Second Circuit in February 2020 upheld a $6.75 million statutory damages award against a New York City real estate developer who whitewashed graffiti art on his property. The decision clarifies standards...

In June 2017, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit's ruling that the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act prohibiting federal trademark registration for marks that disparage persons, living or dead, was facially invalid under the First Amendment protection of speech.

Two recent cases in the news highlight the two different ways that an opinion by the TTAB can wind up before a federal district court.

The EUGC then dismissed Cadbury's challenge to the form of Nestlé's survey evidence.

The requirements for proving use of a trademark in applications, Section 8 or Section 71 use declarations, and renewal applications in the United States Patent and Trademark Office are very different from use requirements in other countries.

In addition, it will now be possible to divide a pending application or existing registration.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held on motion to dismiss that embedded use of content that is publicly posted on Instagram by the copyright owner does not give rise to...

The Second Circuit assumed, without deciding, that unauthorized embedding constitutes copyright infringement. It held that Townsquare’s use of the video was not fair under Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 107, because it was not “transformative.” Townsquare had failed to “add something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the original with new expression, meaning, or message.”

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held in B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Industries, Inc., 135 S.Ct 1293 (2015), that a decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ...

Dewberry Engineers owns a registration for DEWBERRY for real estate services. It sued Dewberry Group, which also used DEWBERRY for real estate services.

Mechanic Mark Towle's business, which operated under the name "Gotham Garage," offered and sold knock-offs—or, in Towle's words, "replicas"—of DC Comics' Batmobile.

In 2011, actor Cindy Lee Garcia auditioned for and received a role in a film she was told would be "an action-adventure thriller set in ancient Arabia" entitled Desert Warrior.

In sustaining the opposition, the Board considered whether DeVivo's mark was used in connection with the stated services, and whether such use served a source-indicating function.

We reported in our March 2025 issue on the D.C. Circuit's decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter, in which the plaintiff, a computer scientist, sought a copyright registration for an image...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is raising fees for many routine trademark filings as of January 18, 2025, and is simultaneously adopting a new filing platform...

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This comprehensive intellectual property update examines recent developments across multiple jurisdictions, from a Second Circuit ruling on TTAB decision preclusion to new EU greenwashing regulations and state-level privacy legislation. The analysis explores how courts and legislators are adapting trademark, copyright, and data protection frameworks to address modern marketplace realities and technological advances.

"Tacking" developed as a trademark doctrine to accommodate the fact that trademark owners sometimes alter their marks over time.

In 2015, Reply All Corp., which owned a Registration for REPLYALL for "Computer services, namely, creating an on-line community for registered users to form groups and create publicly viewable conversations where group members are the only individuals who can contribute to the conversation" in Class 42.