Trademark & Copyright

Trademark owners have a duty to police their mark.  This applies to all types of marks – brand names, slogans, color, product shapes, or even a smell. The cost of dropping the ball on this duty can range from a bar on future enforcement of your rights against a particular company to a complete loss of all trademark rights.

Rapper Dr. Dre and the company he co-founded, Beats Electronics, LLC, are on the offensive at the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board challenging a multitude of third-party applications for marks which consist of or contain the word “Beat”.

My colleagues in our Litigation practice, Harvey Saferstein and Nada I. Shamonki, recently authored an alert "Another Shoe Drops in Washington: Ninth Circuit Expands Personal Jurisdiction over Willful Copyright Infringers".

On November 2, 2012, a federal jury in the Central District of California awarded Mixed Chicks LLC, a beauty supply company for mixed-race women, $839,535 in actual damages and $7,275,000 in punitive damages for willfully infringing the MIXED CHICKS® trademark and trade dress with its MIXED SILK line of products.

Ever since the US Supreme Court in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genetech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 127 S, Ct, 764, 166 L. Ed.604 (2007)  threw out the "reasonable apprehension" test as defining the grounds for bringing a declaratory judgment action, courts have considered a wide variety of factual circumstances in deciding which meet the Court's redefinition of "controversy."

My colleague Susan Weller recently authored an article for Law360 on protecting brand identity.

As we reported  previously, Lululemon, an exercise apparel company, filed suit against Calvin Klein and its supplier G-III Apparel Group for infringement of three Lululemon design patents for yoga pants. On November 20, 2012, Lululemon filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in the Delaware proceeding based upon a settlement that would dismiss the suit with prejudice.

On October 1, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission issued its revised Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, known as the "Green Guides." The purpose of the Guides is to help marketers avoid making environmental marketing claims that may be perceived as deceptive or unfair under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Six months after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of Rosetta Stone's trademark infringement lawsuit against Google, the parties issued a joint statement today announcing that they have settled their legal dispute. 

We at Mintz Levin’s Copyright and Trademark Matter law blog are thrilled to announce that Geri Haight, editor of this blog and our colleague in Mintz Levin’s Intellectual Property group, will receive a Volunteer Service Award at this year’s International Trademark Association (INTA) Leadership Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

A recent TTAB case addresses the issue of functionality and protection of design. In the case In re Navy Exchange Service Command, (“NEXCOM”), the TTAB issued a non-precedential decision on September 29, 2012 in which it reversed the Examining Attorney's refusal to register four irregular block-shaped, multi-colored pixilated pattern design marks that the US Navy used on clothing and fabric.

As you may recall, we asked the question in a recent blog post “Are You Willing to Pay $22,500 to Download A Song? " Well, we now ask "Are you willing to pay $9250 to download a song?" 

A few weeks ago, the Second Circuit's ruling in the Louboutin decision made clear that color as a trademark can be protected in the fashion industry.  Recently, Lululemon has sued Calvin Klein for design patent infringement over the design of yoga pants.

In our August 14th blog, we explained why just because you can copy something from the Internet, doesn’t mean you should copy from the Internet. A case on this very issue that has been around for several years involved the well-known “Hope” poster of President Obama’s face made during the 2008 campaign.

In its recent decision in Christian Louboutin S.A. v. Yves Saint Laurent America, Inc., the Second Circuit held there was no "per se rule that would deny protection for use of a single color as a trademark in a particular industrial context."

The Second Circuit recently issued an opinion in the Louboutin v. Yves Saint Laurent trademark case. To refresh your memory, Louboutin, the high-end women’s shoe designer, had secured a U.S. trademark registration for the color red as used on the outsoles of women’s shoes. 

It appears that Newt Gingrich and Frankie Sullivan, a member of the rock band Survivor, and his company Rude Music , have reached a tentative settlement in the latter’s copyright infringement suits against Gingrich for use of the song "Eye of the Tiger" during Gingrich’s presidential campaign bid.

The August 23, 2012 decision in Song BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the most recent in this extended litigation, leaves no doubt that individuals who download music and distribute it without proper authorization through peer-to-peer file sharing sites are subject to liability for copyright infringement and payment of substantial statutory damages for doing so.

As we reported in December, two adult entertainment companies filed suit in federal district court in Los Angeles against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and ICM Registry, the sole operator of the .XXX domain name registry.

In a number of recent cases, individual photographers have successfully sued third parties for unauthorized reproduction and use of photographs, particularly those from stock photography sources.