Since 2015, the Led Zeppelin band and estate of Randy Wolfe, late singer of the band Spirit, have been embroiled in a copyright lawsuit over “Stairway to Heaven.” The wrinkle in the case comes from issue of whether or not the copyright protection of the sheet music of “Taurus” extends to performance elements of “Taurus” not specifically registered with the United States Copyright Office.
Read MoreMatt’s El Rancho (“Matt’s”), a Tex-Mex restaurant located in Austin, filed suit in late June against Horseshoe Hill Cowboy Café (“Horseshoe”) in Fort Worth, and its founder, Grady Spears, for infringing its BOB ARMSTRONG DIP trademark (Reg. No. 5,135,570).
Read MoreIn 2018, California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), slated to take effect the first day of 2020. The CCPA, with protections so similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that it is known to many as “GDPR-lite,” regulates data breaches and consumers’ privacy.
Read MoreGatorade’s use of “sports fuel” was not an infringement of another company’s mark, per a recent ruling by a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Read MoreIn recent news, the Facebook “Like” button may get a revamp to align with the EU’s GDPR standards.
Read MoreThe Trademark Registration Audit program of the USPTO randomly selects trademark registrations to be audited in order to determine whether the registered trademarks are actually in use with their related goods and services.
Read MoreA Philadelphia bar is seeking to trademark ‘PLAY GLORIA’ and use it in connection with the sale of apparel and merchandise emblazoned with the mark, claiming first use and creation of the connection of use with the mark in support of the St. Louis Blues hockey team that used Laura Branigan’s 1982 song “Gloria” throughout their Stanley Cup championship series.
Read MoreA federal court passed down a blockbuster ruling, holding that e-commerce giant Amazon can be held liable for third party sellers’ products, effectively allowing Amazon to be held liable for defective products sold by third party vendors via the Amazon marketplace.
Read MoreA video of someone licking a tub of Blue Bell ice cream and returning it to a store shelf soon went viral. Beware the legal consequences of intentionally tampering with a consumer product, knowing that the consumer product will be offered for sale to the public or as a gift to another.
Read MoreTech companies and leaders in audio monitoring systems have created aggression detector surveillance technology systems as an alternative to typical video monitoring, to monitor auditory interactions between people and perceive when a conversation is escalating to potential violence, triggering an alert.
Read MoreThe decision over whether Kim Kardashian will be able to successfully register “KIMONO” is left ultimately up to the U.S. Trademark Office alone, and the federal agency is banned from making subjective decisions on the registrability of the mark based on public sentiment.
Read MoreThe Supreme Court ruled that the long-standing precedent and prohibition of seemingly scandalous trademarks violated the First Amendment.
Read MorePrenda Law was found by the court to have acted as copyright trolls, knowingly creating or exacerbating the situation by uploading the very torrents of pornographic content to websites such as Pirate Bay that were at the center of their lawsuits.
Read MoreIntellectual property attorneys should focus on whether Return Mail v. USPS decision will be used to prohibit the government from raising challenges as a “person” in other avenues of intellectual property law.
Read MoreA recent innovation has used the Internet of Things to study bees in an attempt to figure out why there has been such worldwide colony collapse.
Read MoreOne of Amazon’s latest patent applications covers a method for Amazon’s AI-assistant, “Alexa,” to start recording before the trigger or use of the device’s wake word. And reignites debate about consumer privacy and AI.
Read MoreThe estate of famous composer Harold Arlen, composer of the classic “Over the Rainbow”, has sued multiple technology giants over alleged unauthorized recordings of Arlen’s compositions.
Read MoreIn gathering consumer data and “learning” from consumers, without consumer ability to completely shut them off, virtual assistant privacy concerns are valid. Retailers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft argue that the virtual assistant data collection practices, which often allow for no deletion, or even require any sort of disclosure in some cases, are integral to improving the consumer’s experience.
Read MoreEU Copyright Directive Article 17 is an amendment that shifts the burden of copyright infringement policing from copyright owners to the streaming platforms on which the works are uploaded.
Read MoreInvestigators are utilizing social media as evidence of hiding of assets, and for tracking down hackers. Intellectual property attorneys also often use social media to identify, track down, and or prove IP infringement.
Read More
