Law Commons^™

To Participate And Elect: Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act At 40, Ellen D. Katz, Brian Remlinger, Andrew Dziedzic, Brooke Simone, Jordan Schuler

Other Publications

This paper provides an overview of cases decided under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act between September 1, 1982 and December 31, 2021. It updates our 2006 study documenting Section 2 litigation through 2005. Of note is the substantial decline in the number of Section 2 cases decided and diminished success for the plaintiffs who bring them. While recent litigation (including Brnovich and Merrill v. Milligan) suggests that Section 2 is likely to occupy, at best, a diminished role in future electoral disputes, this paper shows that Section 2’s reach had already declined significantly prior to recent disputes. …

Trademark's 'Ship Of Theseus' Problem, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The story of the ship of Theseus has long presented a puzzle over the nature of identity. Preserving the boat over time, the ancient Greeks would remove its wooden planks as they rotted and replace them with new planks. The question arose: was this still the same ship?

The problem hits at an issue that is critical to trademark law but has largely been overlooked: namely, what is the identity of the entity that holds the mark? And how do we determine whether that has changed over time? The law provides straightforward answers: it assigns the mark to the business …

An Empirical Examination Of Consumer Survey Use In Trademark Litigation, Katie Brown Ph.D, Natasha T. Brison, Paul Batista

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

This Article is a comprehensive examination of the use of consumer surveys in trademark litigation cases at the federal level. Previous research has shown consumer surveys can be critical to the outcome of trademark litigation, as they measure the idiosyncratic mental associations and reactions of prospective consumers. For this Article, this study examined 843 trademark infringement and dilution cases spanning 2007 to 2017. The findings reveal consumer surveys are not utilized in trademark litigation as often as research suggests they should be. While consumer surveys are not required in trademark litigation, nor necessarily easy or inexpensive to com- mission, this …

The Trademark Dilution Revision Act's Nullifying Effect On Famous Mark Holder's Dilution Claims, Kathleen Bodenbach

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This comment will address how the TDRA has left famous mark holders, particularly high-end fashion house Louis Vuitton, with little in its arsenal to prevent others from mocking and devaluing its marks despite its worthy efforts. Part II addresses the relationship between trademark infringement, dilution, and parody. Part III takes a closer look at fashion giant Louis Vuitton’s strides to protect its famous marks and the courts’ differing approaches to assessing whether a parody exists. Part III also addresses the relationship between parody when it does and does not operate as a designation of source. Part IV offers a discussion …

The Commodification Of Trademarks: Some Final Thoughts On Trademark Dilution, Kenneth L. Port

Hofstra Law Review

After nearly 20 years of effectiveness, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA) remains as controversial as ever. What the 20 years of jurisprudence has taught us is that academics have been right all along. Dilution is either unconstitutional, inappropriate, or simply misguided legislation. This article calls for its repeal. A thorough literature review shows that most academics oppose dilution. A study of all trademark litigation demonstrates that the cause of action of pure dilution never appears in reported cases anymore. The existence of the FTDA gives trademark holders the perverse incentive to claim that all marks are famous as “fame” …

Trademark Morality, Mark Bartholomew

Mark Bartholomew

This Article challenges the modern rationale for trademark rights. According to both judges and legal scholars, what matters in adjudicating trademark cases are the economic consequences, particularly for consumers, of a defendant’s use of a mark, not the use’s morality. Nevertheless, under this utilitarian facade, there are also at work judicial assessments of highly charged questions of right and wrong. Recent findings in the field of moral psychology demonstrate the influence of particular moral triggers in all areas of human decisionmaking, often operating without conscious awareness. These triggers influence judges deciding trademark disputes. A desire to punish bad actors, particularly …

Slides: The Construction Of Water Scarcity And Its Management: Some Insights From South Africa's Vaal System 'Problemshed', Mike Muller

Coping with Water Scarcity in River Basins Worldwide: Lessons Learned from Shared Experiences (Martz Summer Conference, June 9-10)

Presenter: Mike Muller, School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

31 slides

The Federal Trademark Dilution Act And Its Effect On Parody: No Laughing Matter, Natalie A. Dopson

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Sunbeam Products, Inc V. The West Bend Co.: Exposing The Malign Application Of The Federal Dilution Statute To Product Configurations, Paul Heald

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Trademarks Ride Into The Wild West Of The Internet: A Landmark Ruling Of Cyber Infringement In The Comp Examiner Agency, Inc. V. Juris, Inc., Kimberley J. Hale

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Dilution, An Idea Whose Time Has Gone; Brand Equity As Protectable Property, The New/Old Paradigm, Jerre B. Swann, Theodore H. Davis Jr.

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

"Leave Little Guys Alone!": Protecting Small Businesses From Overly Litigious Corporations And Trademark Infringement Suits, Sara Marie Andrzejewski

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Trademark Law And The Prickly Ambivalence Of Post-Parodies, Charles E. Colman

Charles E. Colman

This Essay examines what I call "post-parodies" in apparel. This emerging genre of do-it-yourself fashion is characterized by the appropriation and modification of third-party trademarks — not for the sake of dismissively mocking or zealously glorifying luxury fashion, but rather to engage in more complex forms of expression. I examine the cultural circumstances and psychological factors giving rise to post-parodic fashion, and conclude that the sensibility causing its proliferation is one grounded in ambivalence. Unfortunately, current doctrine governing trademark parodies cannot begin to make sense of post-parodic goods; among other shortcomings, that doctrine suffers from crude analytical tools and a …

Quiet On Set! We Have A Trademark To Sell, Brittany Robbins

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Dilution At The Patent And Trademark Office, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This Article undertakes the first systematic investigation of trademark dilution in registration practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The Article consists of three distinct descriptive empirical analyses. In the first, I present a new hand-coded dataset of all 453 Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) dispositions of dilution claims through June 30, 2014, and report that dilution has been necessary to the PTO’s refusal of exactly three registrations in over a decade. In the second part, I apply algorithmic coding of the recently released PTO Casefiles Dataset to demonstrate that concurrent registration of identical marks to different …

Trademark Morality, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

This Article challenges the modern rationale for trademark rights. According to both judges and legal scholars, what matters in adjudicating trademark cases are the economic consequences, particularly for consumers, of a defendant’s use of a mark, not the use’s morality. Nevertheless, under this utilitarian facade, there are also at work judicial assessments of highly charged questions of right and wrong. Recent findings in the field of moral psychology demonstrate the influence of particular moral triggers in all areas of human decisionmaking, often operating without conscious awareness. These triggers influence judges deciding trademark disputes. A desire to punish bad actors, particularly …

Trademark Law Harmonization In The European Union: Twenty Years Back And Forth, William Robinson, Giles Pratt, Ruth Kelly

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Minority Vote Dilution In The Age Of Obama, Dale Ho

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Vcs Use Inside Rounds To Dilute Founders? Some Evidence From Silicon Valley, Brian Broughman, Jesse Fried

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the bank-borrower setting, a firm's existing lender may exploit its positional advantage to extract rents from the firm in subsequent financings. Analogously, a startup's existing venture capital investors (VCs) may dilute the founder through a follow-on financing from these same VCs (an “inside” round) at an artificially low valuation. Using a hand-collected dataset of Silicon Valley startup firms, we find little evidence that VCs use inside rounds to dilute founders. Instead, our findings suggest that inside rounds are generally used as “backstop financing” for startups that cannot attract new money, and these rounds are conducted at relatively high valuations …

Sex Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

The state regulates sexual activity through a combination of criminal and civil sanctions and the award of benefits, such as marriage and First Amendment protections, for acts and speech that conform with the state’s vision of acceptable sex. Although the penalties for non-compliance with the state’s vision of appropriate sex are less severe in intellectual property law than those, for example, in criminal or family law, IP law also signals the state’s views of sex. In this Article written for the Stanford symposium on the Adult Entertainment industry, I extend my consideration of the law’s treatment of sex after Lawrence …

The Myth And Reality Of Dilution, Sandra L. Rierson

Sandra L Rierson

Statutory dilution claims are traditionally justified on the theory that even non-confusing uses of a famous trademark (or similar mark) can nonetheless minutely dilute the source-identifying power of the targeted trademark. The assumption of both the original federal dilution statute enacted in 1995 as well as its substantial enlargement in 2006 is that the source-identifying capacity of a trademark is akin to a glass of water: spill a drop here, spill a drop there and eventually your glass is empty. This Article advances three claims. First, statutory dilution erroneously assumes that the source-identifying function of a trademark is a rivalrous …

Ending Dilution Doublespeak: Reviving The Concept Of Economic Harm In The Dilution Action, Alexander Dworkowitz

Alexander Dworkowitz

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of Buick Aspirin: An Empirical Study Of Trademark Dilution By Product And Trade Names, Robert Brauneis, Paul J. Heald

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Trademark dilution is a highly controversial cause of action that has been the subject of hundreds of law review articles, but no significant scientific work. We analyze 60 years of telephone white pages, corporate & LLC naming data, advertisements from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, state and federal trademark databases, and all recorded dilution litigation. Our data suggest strongly that famous trademarks are frequently borrowed for use as trade names in services, but almost never as trade marks on products. Given that Congress based anti-dilution legislation on the assumption that uses like Buick Aspirin were …

Trademark Infringement, Trademark Dilution, And The Decline In Sharing Of Famous Brand Names: An Introduction And Empirical Study, Robert Brauneis, Paul J. Heald

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article provides an introduction to the study of brand-name sharing, and presents results from an empirical study of sharing rates among 131 famous brand names from 1940 through 2010, conducted through an examination of business names in the white pages telephone directories of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Manhattan. Perhaps the most dramatic finding of the study is that independent uses of the 131 brand names – that is, uses of those names by businesses other than those that made the names famous – have declined from 3000 to 1380 between 1960 and 2010, a 54% drop. The article then assesses …

Vol. Xv, Tab 52 - Rosetta Stone's Reply Brief In Support Of Its Motion For Partial Summary Judgment As To Liability, Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Vol. Xix, Tab 56 - Rosetta Stone's Reply Brief In Support Of Its Motion For Partial Summary Judgment As To Liability, Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Vol. Ix, Tab 44 - Rosetta Stone's Opposition To Google's Motion For Summary Judgment, Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Vol. Xvii, Tab 54 - Google's Reply Motion In Further Support Of Its Motion For Summary Judgment, Google

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

New-School Trademark Dilution: Famous Among The Juvenile Consuming Public, Alexandra J. Roberts

Law Faculty Scholarship

The recently enacted Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 recalibrated the degree of fame necessary to garner protection: the TDRA applies only to a mark "widely recognized by the general consuming public of the United States as a designation of source of the goods or services of the mark’s owner." By privileging those major players who succeed in turning their brands into household names, the TDRA strengthens incentives for mark-owners to ensure their logos and brand names are well-recognized not only among adult consumers, but also among children. This Article examines a set of marketing behaviors aimed at children that …

Slides: Water Footprints: Consciousness Raising Meets Risk Management, Steve Malloch

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Steve Malloch, Senior Western Water Program Manager, National Wildlife Federation, Seattle, WA

38 slides