Law Commons^™

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 …

Intellectual Property’S Lessons For Information Privacy, Mark Bartholomew

Mark Bartholomew

There is an inherent tension between an individual’s desire to safeguard her personal information and the expressive rights of businesses seeking to communicate that information to others. This tension has multiplied as consumers generate and businesses collect more and more personal data online, forcing efforts to strike an appropriate balance between privacy and commercial speech. No consensus on this balance has been reached. Some privacy scholars bemoan what they see as a slanted playing field in favor of those wishing to profit from the private details of other people’s lives. Others contend that the right in free expression must always …

Exceeding Its Authority: The Uspto Prevents Federal Registration Of Medical Marijuana Trademarks, Stephanie Gambino

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) took concrete steps to reduce transaction costs to consumers purchasing medical marijuana products by creating a category for medical marijuana products within International Class 5. However, that decision was rescinded quickly. Then, the USPTO overreached its statutory authority by ordering a wholesale prohibition of federal registration for medical marijuana trademarks. This Comment argues that because the USPTO overreached its statutory authority in prohibiting federal registration for medical marijuana trademarks, it should reinstate the category for medical marijuana products and allow medical marijuana producers to seek federal registration of their trademarks. Part I …

The Liberty To Copy Unpatented Inventions, Boston University, Wendy J. Gordon

BU Law Presentations

Poster for Wendy Gordon's 2017 University Lecture

Balancing The Crucible: The Revolving Conflict Between Fair Use And Corporate Use In The Battle To Control Domain Names, Stacey Knapp

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Dastar V. Twentieth Century Fox--One Can't Get Back By Trademark What One Gave Up Under Copyright, Sue Mota

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Cannabis Trademarks: A State Registration Consortium Solution, Russell W. Jacobs

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This article proposes a solution to a problem in the cannabis industry resulting from the unavailability of federal trademark registration for that sector. The author offers modest changes to the existing state trademark registration systems to make up for the gaps at the federal level. The proposed reforms would strengthen the trademark framework by conferring on cannabis trademark registrations presumptions of ownership, exclusive rights, and validity beyond the presumption of registration currently afforded under state laws. To extend protection throughout the geographic breadth of the cannabis marketplace, the states with legalized recreational cannabis would offer reciprocal recognition of state cannabis …

Trademark Boundaries And 3d Printing, Lucas S. Osborn

Akron Law Review

3D printing technology promises to disrupt trademark law at the same time that trademark law and policy sustain repeated criticism. The controversial growth of trademark law over the last century has yielded amorphous sponsorship and affiliation confusion issues and empirically fragile post-sale and initial-interest confusion theories, among others. Into this melee marches 3D printing technology, which dissociates the process of design from that of manufacturing and democratizes manufacturing. Rather than being embodied only in physical objects, design is embodied in digital CAD files that users can post and sell on the internet. The digitization of physical objects raises fundamental questions …

Charitable Trademarks, Leah Chan Grinvald

Akron Law Review

Charity is big business in the United States. In 2015, private individuals or entities donated over $350 billion, which accounted for approximately two percent of the gross domestic product in the United States. Even though this seems like big money, these donations were split among over 1.5 million organizations. And each year, the number of charitable organizations grows and therefore, the competition for public donations increases. In part to succeed in such competition, some charitable organizations have turned to branding and trademarks as a way to differentiate their entities and to encourage donations. Drawing from the for-profit branding and trademarking …

The Ttab Should Drink A Beer And Relax: Implications For Trademark Consent Agreements In The Craft Brewing Industry After In Re Bay State Brewing Company, Inc., Spencer T. Wiles

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

The World’S Trademark Powerhouse: A Critique Of China’S New Trademark Law, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

China has become the world’s trademark powerhouse with the largest number of trademark registrations for goods and services. Parallel to the new rise is the explosion of scandals concerning trademarked goods, causing numerous deaths, massive hospitalizations, and consumer defection from domestic brands. Instead of having a trademark law with consumer protection as the cornerstone, China’s new Trademark Law will cement China as the world’s manufacturer of trademarks. This Article is the first to critically examine China’s new Trademark Law. The new law mainly centers on creating procedural measures for more trademark registrations, maintaining China’s trademark registration powerhouse status, and perpetuating …

Wrigley Field, The Trademark, Benjamin J. Welch

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This paper is about the theory of applying the law of trade dress and all the protections that come with it to stadiums, specifically to Wrigley Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. Trade dress is the version of trademark reserved for the packaging, design, or color of products. If the packaging, design, or color possesses the ability to identify the source or creator of the product, then it can create a possessory interest in the product’s creator for that style of packaging, design of the product, or color used. This possessory interest is used to protect the reputation …

Notice And Takedown In The Domain Name System: Icann’S Ambivalent Drift Into Online Content Regulation, Annemarie Bridy

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toward A More Coherent Doctrine Of Trademark Genericism And Functionality: Focusing On Fair Competition, Sandra L. Rierson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The doctrines of trademark genericism and functionality serve similar functions under the Lanham Act and the common law of unfair competition. Genericism, in the context of word marks, and functionality, for trade dress, bar trademark registration under the Lanham Act and, both under the Act and at common law, render a trademark unprotectable and invalid. In the word mark context, genericism stands for the proposition that certain parts of vocabulary cannot be cordoned off as trademarks; all competitors must be able to use words that consumers understand to identify the goods or services that they are selling. Functionality likewise demands …

Who Will Protect The Consumers Of Trademarked Goods?, James Astrachan

University of Baltimore Law Review

Federal and state law recognizes multiple forms of intellectual property, including patents,1 copyrights,2 trademarks,3 and trade secrets.4 Alleged violations of patents and copyrights are required by statute to be litigated in the federal courts.5 Trademark rights can arise under the Federal Lanham Act6 or state law.7 Trademark infringement can be litigated in state or federal courts.8 Trade secrets arising under state statutes are litigated in state courts unless diversity jurisdiction exists and is pled.9

Infringement of intellectual property in the case of patents arises when a patented invention is used, manufactured or imported into the United States without authority of …

Caught Between A Mark And A Hard Place: Resolving U.S.-Cuban Trademark Disputes In A Post-Embargo World, Mary Grace Griffin

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The Split On The Rogers V. Grimaldi Gridiron: An Analysis Of Unauthorized Trademark Use In Artistic Mediums, Anthony Zangrillo

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Movies, television programs, and video games often exploit trademarks within their content. In particular, various media often attempt to use the logos of professional sports teams within artistic works. Courts have utilized different methods to balance the constitutional protections of the First Amendment with the property interests granted to the owner of a trademark. This Note discusses these methods, which include the alternative avenues approach, the likelihood of confusion test, and the right of publicity analysis. Ultimately, many courts utilize the framework presented in the seminal Rogers v. Grimaldi decision. This test analyzes the artistic relevance of the trademark’s use …

How Many Likes Did It Get? Using Social Media Metrics To Establish Trademark Rights, Caroline Mrohs

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This comment asserts that there is a need for an update to the multifactor test considered by courts in determining the strength of a trademark. Traditional factors include the expenses an entity can afford to pay in advertising, but do not give any weight to the presence of the entity on social media to reach its target consumer group.

Moral Judgments In Trademark Law, Ned Snow

American University Law Review

Under the federal Lanham Act, eligibility for trademark protection depends on whether a mark is sufficiently moral. The Federal Circuit has recently held this provision of the Act to be unconstitutional based on its interpretation of speech doctrine. The context of trademark law, however, refutes this interpretation. Indeed, speech doctrine appears to support this morality requirement. Nevertheless, there seems to be another reason that the Federal Circuit held the morality requirement unconstitutional: the judicial discomfort with morality serving as a basis for law. This Essay concludes that this judicial discomfort is unjustified in this instance. From both a constitutional and …

Protecting Fashion Designs: Not Only "What?" But "Who?", Julie Zerbo

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trademark Use Doctrine In The European Union And Japan, Martin Husovec

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

None

What's Your Story? Every Famous Mark Has One: Persuasion In Trademark Opposition Briefs, Candace Hays

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

A key contention of legal writing scholarship is that the legal resolution is rooted in storytelling. The law consists of an endless telling and retelling of stories. Clients tell stories to their lawyers, who must figure out how to frame their client’s narrative into a legal context. Lawyers retell their clients’ stories to judges using pleadings, motions, and legal briefs. Judges and administrators retell these stories in the form of an opinion or verdict.

Storytelling in the legal context is an important element of persuasion. For the purpose of this comment, legal storytelling is defined as the use of fiction-writing …

What's In, And What's Out: How Ip's Boundary Rules Shape Innovation, Mark Mckenna, Christopher J. Sprigman

Journal Articles

Intellectual property law sorts subject matter into a variety of different regimes, each with different terms of protection and different rules of protectability, infringement, and defenses. For that sorting to be effective, IP needs principles to distinguish the subject matter of each system. This paper focuses on one of the most important aspects of border-drawing that our IP system undertakes — identifying “useful” subject matter.

This aspect is critical because our IP system gives utility patent law pride of place and draws the boundaries of the other doctrines in large part to respect utility patent’s supremacy. Yet IP law’s sense …

Criminal Trademark Enforcement And The Problem Of Inevitable Creep, Mark Mckenna

Journal Articles

This Article, delivered as the 2017 Oldham Lecture at the University of Akron School of Law, focuses on the federal Trademark Counterfeiting Act (TCA), the primary source of federal criminal trademark sanctions. That statute was intended to increase the penalties associated with the most egregious form of trademark infringement — use of an identical mark for goods identical to those for which the mark is registered and in a context in which the use is likely to deceive consumers about the actual source of the counterfeiter’s goods. The TCA was intended to ratchet up the penalties associated with counterfeiting, but …

#Protected Hashtags, Trademarks, And The First Amendment, Delaram Yousefi

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Plague Of Fake News And The Intersection With Trademark, Joshua Humphrey

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

A Taste Of The Current Protection Offered By Intellectual Property Law To Molecular Gastronomy, Mary Grace Hyland

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Beyond Trademarks And Offense: Tam And The Justices’ Evolution On Free Speech, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Matal v. Tam , the Supreme Court threw out the “disparagement clause” of the Lanham Act, the federal trademark law, because trademarks are private speech and thus regulating them based on government determinations of offensiveness violates the First Amendment. The solid outcome here contrasts with the narrow, incremental results in some other recent First Amendment cases that reached the Court.

Fixing Incontestability: The Next Frontier?, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Incontestability is a nearly unique feature of American trademark law, with a unique American implementation. The concept of incontestability allows a trademark registrant to overcome arguments that a symbol is merely descriptive of features or qualities of the registrant’s goods or services—for example, “Juicy” for apples. Incontestability provides a nearly irrebuttable presumption of trademark meaning, which is a powerful tool for trademark owners. Unfortunately, incontestability is not granted as carefully as its power would counsel. Courts may misunderstand either the prerequisites for, or the meaning of incontestability, allowing trademark claimants to assert rights that they don’t actually have

Incontestability needs …