iPad Trademark Rights
This Phoenix Patent Attorney was in Miami for part of the last two weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice the tremendous use of huge billboards. Advertising is colossal in that town, and so trademarks are everywhere. On the way…
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Are you a serious trademark owner? 27 easy questions.
DuetsBlog is a consistently well-written, highly-informative blog that is quickly becoming one of my favorites. It features articles that are interesting and helpful, not just rarefied academic discussions on case law. And it is approachable for the attorney and the…
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Differences between the Principal Register and the Supplemental Register
When trademark attorneys talk about registering trademarks (not “trademarking”), they generally mean registering a trademark on the Principal Register. We all aspire to have an application show up here, but sadly, we aren’t always so successful. There is another, seedy,…
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Foreign Language Trademarks and Non-English Trademark Applications
Trademark registration applications for non-English words present special challenges. Trademark examination at the USPTO normally considers whether there are similar marks already registered that would prevent the applied-for mark from being registered. Typically, the USPTO considers the look, sound, and…
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Right to Use versus Right to Exclude
The law provides for different rights, depending on the subject matter concerned, the evolution of the law through courts and legislative bodies, and practical implications. Some people think that a patent or a trademark gives the owner a right to…
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Trademark Opposition
A trademark opposition can be part of the registration application process. Typically, a successful application proceeds through the Trademark Office in a predictable manner: the application is filed, the applicant and examiner communicate and work on the application, and the…
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Who owns my logo? The graphic design company that developed it or me?
You may have hired a graphic artist or agency to develop your company’s logo. Do you know who owns the rights in it? There are two main types of intellectual property rights that can reside in a logo: copyright and…
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Lemons, Lemonade, and Legal Advice
Lawyers are famous infamous for saying “no.” Clients rarely want to hear that answer, but part of fulfilling a lawyer’s obligations sometimes requires it. When I was a kid, I played with G.I.Joes. I recently delved into the recesses of…
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Can a slogan be a trademark?
A trademark can be many things: a word, a symbol, a logo, a name, and even a slogan. A trademark can really be anything that signifies the source of the product or service and that also distinguishes it from others. …
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Is Web Scraping Legal?
I had a friend get in touch with me a while back about the legalities of web scraping. He found, and I’m finding too, a tremendous lack of information about web scraping. I think this is a result of there being so many strange ramifications depending on the many variables in the facts of each situation. I got interested in the legal issues involved in web scraping, and so I put together a hypothetical to test some of them out.