Intellectual Property Blog

January 5, 2015

Segway Files Lawsuits over Hoverboards

Segway and its parent company Ninebot have recently filed suit against two companies manufacturing versions of their self-balancing scooters, commonly called hoverboards. This comes in an effort to counteract negative…

December 31, 2014

SLAMMING THE DOOR ON DOMAIN NAME HIJACKING

During the 1980s after the breakup of “Ma Bell” (AT&T Corp.) when US regulators broke up the AT&T Corp. monopoly by a consent decree in the anti-trust lawsuit, United States…

December 10, 2014

COPYRIGHT PREREGISTRATION: WHEN AND WHY

The Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 permits preregistration of certain types of unpublished works if it determines that such works have a history of infringement prior to…

December 10, 2014

JURY STILL OUT ON THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) was created by Congress as part of patent reform legislation under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) signed into law in September 2011.…

December 10, 2014

PROTECTED TRADEMARKS AND DOMAIN NAME DISPUTES

What are your rights when the trademark you properly protected ends up — just slightly altered — as the domain name of a totally unrelated party? That was the question…

November 11, 2014

TRADEMARKS: “USE IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE”

Although there is no requirement that a trademark actually be used by the applicant prior to filing a trademark application, there is a requirement that the person or enterprise seeking…

November 11, 2014

PROS AND CONS OF PROVISIONAL PATENTS

On September 16, 2011 the America Invents Act (AIA) was signed into law, thus heralding a radical shift in U.S. patent procedure away from the historic—and globally practiced—”first to invent”…

November 11, 2014

COPYRIGHT FAIR USE DEFENSE

Copyright laws were designed to recognize the creative rights — and their resultant profits — that artists and authors possess in the creative works they contribute to society. Accordingly, such…

August 2, 2014

Second Life TOS: A Partial Analysis and How to Protect your Digital Content

In November 2003, Linden announced that it would recognize participants’ full intellectual property protection for the digital content they created or otherwise owned in Second Life. As a result, Second…

July 21, 2014

Cyber Piracy Law: Domain Names and Right of Privacy

Causes of action for the use of someone’s famous name are CyberPiracy, unfair competition and false advertising in the nature of false endorsement which is essentially the federal equivalent of…