Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

The Angel Wears Prada, The Devil Buys It On The Realreal: Expanding Trademark Rights Beyond The First Sale Doctrine, Junajoy Vinoya Frianeza

Pepperdine Law Review

Luxury brands derive their goodwill from the high-class exclusivity and first-rate quality signified in their trademarks. The Trademark Act of 1946, commonly known as the Lanham Act, grants trademark holders the right to control use of their mark. However, under common law, the first sale doctrine restricts trademark protection after holders authorize the initial sale of their trademarked product. Such limitation particularly jeopardizes the luxury industry as trademark holders ultimately bear the loss of goodwill when counterfeit luxury goods enter the market due to the negligence of resellers. This Comment illustrates how blockchain authentication offers all luxury industry participants—the brands, …

Who Owns Your Name? The Trend And Economic Impact Of Personal Trademarks In The Ncaa Nil Aftermath, Daniel Foster

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

To aid in understanding the prevalence of personal athlete logos and the trend of ownership and design, Section II will outline the history of this area of trademark law in the United States. It will provide background on the theory of trademark ownership and the development of this intellectual property discipline in the athletic and celebrity sphere. Section II will look at the two common and distinct processes, a company-designed logo versus an athlete-designed logo, and the modern trends in this area. Moving on from this historical discussion, Section III will examine the 2021 decision of NCAA v. Alston, the …

Albrecht Dürer’S Enforcement Actions: A Trademark Origin Story, Peter J. Karol

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article offers a trademark-framed reappraisal of a pair of extraordinary enforcement actions brought by the Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) against copyists of his work. These cases have long been debated by art, cultural, and copyright historians insofar as they appear to reject Dürer’s demand for protocopyright protection. Commentators have also contested the historicity of one of the two narratives. But surprisingly little attention has been paid by trademark scholars to the companion holdings-—in the same texts-—that affirm Dürer’s right to prevent the use of his monogram on unauthorized reproductions.

This Article seeks to fill that gap by …

Raising The Threshold For Trademark Infringement Protect Free Expression, Christine Haight Farley, Lisa P. Ramsey

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The First Amendment right to free speech limits the scope of rights in trademark law. Congress and the courts have devised various defenses and common law doctrines to ensure that protected speech is exempted from trademark infringement liability. These defensive trademark doctrines, however, are narrow and often vary by jurisdiction. One current example is the speech-protective test first articulated by the Second Circuit in Rogers v. Grimaldi, expanded by the Ninth Circuit, and recently restricted by the Supreme Court in Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products to uses of another’s mark within an expressive work that do not designate the …

Unauthorized And Unwise: The Lawful Use Requirement In Trademark Law, Robert Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For decades, the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO") has required trademark owners to comply with sundry nontrademark laws governing the sale of their trademarked goods and services. Pursuant to this "lawful use requirement," the Agency has refused or even cancelled registration of thousands of marks used on everything from Schedule 1 controlled substances to mislabeled soap. This Article subjects the Agency's lawful use requirement to long-overdue scrutiny. It suggests that in requiring compliance with other laws for registration, the PTO has lost sight of the one statute it is supposed to administer. In the process, the Agency has …

Navigating The Identity Thicket: Trademark's Lost Theory Of Personality, The Right Of Publicity, And Preemption, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

Both trademark and unfair competition laws and state right of publicity laws protect against unauthorized uses of a person’s identity. Increasingly, however, these rights are working at odds with one another, and can point in different directions with regard to who controls a person’s name, likeness, and broader indicia of identity. This creates what I call an "identity thicket" of overlapping and conflicting rights over a person’s identity. Current jurisprudence provides little to no guidance on the most basic questions surrounding this thicket, such as what right to use a person’s identity, if any, flows from the transfer of marks …

Edward S. Rogers, The Lanham Act, And The Common Law, Jessica Litman

Book Chapters

This book chapter is a deep dive into the story of Edward Sidney Rogers's authorship of the legislation that became the Lanham Act. Because Rogers believed that Congress lacked the power to alter the substantive law of trademark and unfair competition, he crafted draft legislation that focused on registration and other procedural details rather than substantive rights and defenses. He sought to advance two incompatible goals: he hoped to preserve the robust common law of unfair competition while requiring, or at least encouraging, all trademark owners to register their marks. Both the supporters and the opponents of the bills that …

Unauthorized And Unwise: The Lawful Use Requirement In Trademark Law, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law Review

For decades, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) has required trademark owners to comply with sundry nontrademark laws governing the sale of their trademarked goods and services. Pursuant to this “lawful use requirement,” the Agency has refused or even cancelled registration of thousands of marks used on everything from Schedule I controlled substances to mislabeled soap. This Article subjects the Agency’s lawful use requirement to long-overdue scrutiny. It suggests that in requiring compliance with other laws for registration, the PTO has lost sight of the one statute it is supposed to administer. In the process, the Agency has …

Bully No More: Why Trademark Owners Engage In Trademark Overreach And How To Prevent It, Quynh La

Washington Law Review

At its core, trademark law exists as a tool for consumer protection. Thus, trademark owners use policing and enforcement to maintain a trademark’s goodwill, which in turn protects consumers from confusion. But policing and enforcement can lead to trademark overreach and bullying—which undermine the goal of trademark law. This Comment explains that trademark owners are incentivized to engage in aggressive enforcement tactics because courts weigh enforcement efforts in favor of trademark strength. And strong trademarks receive strong protection because such marks are more likely to succeed in trademark infringement litigation. To curb trademark bullying and realign trademark law with its …

An Af(Fur)Mative Defense: Using Intellecutal Property As A Defense To Employment Discrimination In Mascot Hiring, Taylor Farr

Arkansas Law Review

"Until a character becomes a personality, it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience." Walt Disney1 Mascots 2 are different animals. They bring some of our favorite characters from screens, packages, and comic book pages to life. Moreover, mascots serve a particularly important role on university campuses, offering a point of communal continuity3 amid inevitable organizational changes. Although university buildings, athletes, faculty, and staff will eventually change, a …

The Defend Trade Secrets Act And Foreign Theft: The Application Of The Act To Extraterritorial Misappropriation, John Dustin Hawkins

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

This Note explores the evolution of federal trade secret law in the United States, particularly the enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016. Part II discusses the legislative history of the Act, as well as key provisions and definitions of the Act, which are critical when considering the DTSA's extraterritorial application. Additionally, this Note considers the tests used by courts to determine extraterritorial application in other areas of U.S. law. Part III explains why a uniformly-applied balancing test would best serve the courts in determining the extraterritorial application of the DTSA to reach foreign conduct.

The Lost Unfair Competition Law, Christine Farley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The accepted metaphor that trademark law is a species of the genus of unfair competition law distorts both the actual history and the relationship between the two. Tracing the development of the law reveals a related sequence of significant events, some of which have been forgotten. This back-story suggests that a particularly innovative treaty incorporated by reference into the Lanham Act was meant to be the vehicle for unfair competition protection. As a result of this lost law, unfair competition law remains an enigma today.

Overlapping Copyright And Trademark Protection In The United States: More Protection And More Fair Use?, Jane C. Ginsburg, Irene Caboli

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter addresses the phenomenon of overlapping rights under US law and complements Chapter 25 authored by Professors Derclay and Ng-Loy on the overlap of trademark, copyright, and design protection under several other Common Law and Civil Law jurisdictions. Because the United States does not provide sui generis protection for industrial design, but instead protects design through trademark law (notably by protecting trade dress) and design patents, this chapter focuses on the overlap between trademark and copyright protection. The Lalique bottles created for Nina Ricci perfumes, for example, may enjoy both trademark and copyright protection in the United States. Similarly, …

Left With No Name: How Government Action In Intra-Church Trademark Disputes Violates The Free Exercise Clause Of The First Amendment, Mary Kate Nicholson

Washington and Lee Law Review

The United States was founded in part on the principle of freedom of religion, where citizens were free to practice any religion. The founding fathers felt so strongly about this principle that it was incorporated into the First Amendment. The Free Exercise Clause states that “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” The Supreme Court later adopted the neutral principles approach to avoid Free Exercise violations resulting from courts deciding real property disputes. Without the application of the same neutral principles to intellectual property disputes between churches, however, there is …

Trademarks & The First Amendment After Matal V. Tam, Gary Myers

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

The United States Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Matal v. Tam is a landmark decision regarding the intersection between free speech and trademark law. Addressing whether trademarks can legitimately be barred from federal trademark protection under the Lanham Act based solely on their possible disparaging content, the litigation involving an Asian-American band that sought to register the name, "The Slants," brought this important interplay into stark relief. Writing in bold strokes, Justice Alito's opinion holds that the Lanham Act's prohibition on disparaging marks, 15 U.S.C. 51052(a), violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. "It offends a bedrock First …

Public Policy Limitations On Trademark Subject Matter: A U.S. Perspective, Christine Farley

Contributions to Books

This chapter provides an overview of the public policy limitations on trademark subject matter under U.S. law. This is an area of law that had been fairly stable until recently. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 decision striking down the prohibition on registering disparaging marks and its 2019 decision striking down the prohibition on registering immoral and scandalous marks may prompt a larger reexamination of the policy justifications for denying trademark registration.

Property And Equity In Trademark Law, Mark P. Mckenna

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

This lecture focuses on the relationship between trademark and unfair competition. Specifically, this lecture discusses the way trademark law has evolved over time with respect to property concepts. There has been a lot of discussion in the literature about the ways trademark law has come to treat trademarks as property. Many scholars who have written about this “propertization” have described it as a shift from consumer to producer protection.

I have written a lot about this narrative over the course of my career—I think it is overly simplistic, and in some ways, wrong. Trademark law has al-ways protected marks as …

Thou Shalt Not Steele: Reexamining The Extraterritorial Reach Of The Lanham Act, James C. Gracey

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

US courts have applied domestic trademark law to actions taken outside of the United States's borders for years, but the US Supreme Court recently revamped the presumption against extraterritoriality, a canon of statutory interpretation. The presumption against extraterritoriality promotes a judicial means of respecting the sovereignty of foreign states by disallowing the application of domestic law to foreign acts. However, the Supreme Court interpreted the Lanham Act, the United States's domestic trademark law, to have extraterritorial reach in Bulova Watch Co. v. Steele. This Note traces the recent evolution and strengthening of the presumption before analyzing how circuit courts have …

Merging Offensive-Speech Cases With Viewpoint-Discrimination Principles: The Immediate Impact Of Matal V. Tam On Two Strands Of First Amendment Jurisprudence, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines flaws with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Matal v. Tam that equated giving offense with viewpoint discrimination. Already, the Court’s language in Tam that “giving offense is a viewpoint” is being cited by multiple lower courts. This Article argues, however, that giving offense is not synonymous with viewpoint discrimination. This Article contends that the Court in Tam conflated two distinct strands of First Amendment jurisprudence—namely, its offensive-speech cases with principles against viewpoint discrimination. The Article proposes two possible paths forward to help courts better clarify when a case such as Tam should be analyzed as …

Property And Equity In Trademark Law, Mark Mckenna

Journal Articles

This essay, delivered as the Nies Lecture at Marquette Law School, focuses on changes in the doctrinal structure of trademark law over the course of the last century — specifically with respect to the relationship between trademark law’s limits and the broader common law of unfair competition. Changes in that relationship, I will argue, meaningfully increased trademark law's emphasis on property — what the plaintiff owns — and deemphasized legal rules that focused on the defendant’s conduct.

Historical Perspectives & Reflections On "Matal V. Tam" And The Future Of Offensive Trademarks, Russ Versteeg

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of Uniformity In Ip Laws, Sharon K. Sandeen

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

When Congress enacts federal laws, it is often because of the asserted benefits of a “uniform” law and the, often unspoken, assumption that federal laws are somehow more uniform than uniform state laws. Infact, the uniformity argument was a primary justification for theenactment of both the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and the EU Trade Secret Directive.

The quest for uniformity, particularly with respect to laws that relate to intellectual property rights, is an old story in the United States. During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the existence of inconsistent state laws was a central reason for the …

Trademark's Judicial De-Evolution: Why Courts Get Trademark Cases Wrong Repeatedly, Glynn Lunney

Glynn Lunney

Trademark law has de-evolved. It has transitioned from an efficient mechanism for ensuring competition into an inefficient regime for capturing economic rents. In this Article, I focus on the role that party self-interest has played in biasing the evolution of trademark law. This self-interest tends to lead parties to (1) challenge efficient legal rules and seek to replace them with inefficient, anticompetitive rules, and (2) accede to inefficient, anticompetitive rules once they are in place. Almost by definition, when a rule of trademark law promotes competition, it reduces the market surplus or rents that current producers capture. As a result, …

Trademark's Judicial De-Evolution: Why Courts Get Trademark Cases Wrong Repeatedly, Glynn Lunney

Faculty Scholarship

Trademark law has de-evolved. It has transitioned from an efficient mechanism for ensuring competition into an inefficient regime for capturing economic rents. In this Article, I focus on the role that party self-interest has played in biasing the evolution of trademark law. This self-interest tends to lead parties to (1) challenge efficient legal rules and seek to replace them with inefficient, anticompetitive rules, and (2) accede to inefficient, anticompetitive rules once they are in place. Almost by definition, when a rule of trademark law promotes competition, it reduces the market surplus or rents that current producers capture. As a result, …

Dh Brothers Industries (Pty) Limited Vs. Olivine Industries (Pty) Limited (Appeal No. 74/2010) [2012] Zmsc 17, Chanda N. Tembo

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Weird Science! It’S My Creation . . . Is It Really? Or: Crafting A New Universal Trademark Standard For User-Created Avatars, Ryan Esparza

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

In modern trademark law the process of registering a valid trademark is straightforward. In the United States the Lanham Act is the ruling law of trademark law. The Lanham Act grants protection to the owner of a registered mark which is distinctive and used in commerce. Assuming all the requirements are met, the owner of a mark can use the mark within its discretion and enjoy the protection under the Lanham Act. As trademark law has continued to evolve, the law has expanded to protect previously unforeseen categories. The two most obvious examples which demonstrate the evolution of protection under …

Brandright, Jessica M. Kiser

Arkansas Law Review

Trademark law is guilty of overprotection. This overprotection pits both a company’s in-house attorneys against its own marketing professionals and the company itself against its most loyal customers. The result appears illogical, at best, to consumers witnessing the effects of this clash between a company’s marketing needs and perceived legal requirements.

Makeup Dupes And Fair Use, Samantha Primeaux

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Erie/Sears/Compco Squeeze: Erie’S Effects On Unfair Competition And Trade Secret Law, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Supreme Court's famous decision in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, this article explores the consequences of that decision on the development of unfair competition law in the United States. It details efforts by lawyers and legislators to grapple with those consequences and provides an overview of the evolution of unfair competition law in the U.S. since Erie, with a particular focus on trade secret law.

Intellectual Property In Experience, Madhavi Sunder

Michigan Law Review

In today’s economy, consumers demand experiences. From Star Wars to Harry Potter, fans do not just want to watch or read about their favorite characters— they want to be them. They don the robes of Gryffindor, flick their wands, and drink the butterbeer. The owners of fantasy properties understand this, expanding their offerings from light sabers to the Galaxy’s Edge®, the new Disney Star Wars immersive theme park opening in 2019.Since Star Wars, Congress and the courts have abetted what is now a $262 billion-a-year industry in merchandising, fashioning “merchandising rights” appurtenant to copyrights and trademarks that give fantasy owners …