November 2016

The records of applications and registrations at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are publicly available, allowing individuals and companies to evaluate the registered trademark rights of third-parties. Unfortunately, these same records are also accessible by individuals for more sinister purposes, including sending “invoices” to applicants that appear to be official requests for required payments.

The band’s song “Easy” does not reflect Commodores’ founder Thomas McClary’s court battle to use the trademark “COMMODORES founder Thomas McClary” for his solo career.  As I dug further into the meaning of the song, it is actually about the relief of ending a really difficult relationship.  I guess it fits that the relationship, or

The long running trademark dispute between Adidas and a church in Illinois just had a decision handed down by a federal appeals court. Adidas thought it could outrun a church in Zion Illinois, but it appears that they miscalculated the church’s endurance.

In 2009, Adidas applied to register the ADIZERO mark for athletic apparel. Unfortunately

When it is clear that you need to take responsibility for an obvious inconvenience, it is far better to own “the” inconvenience than apologize for “any” inconvenience, bravo RBC Plaza:

RBCPlazaEscalator

As legal types know full well, “any” leaves a wide open possibility of there actually being “none” — after all, “zero” is

The cause and effect relationship between art and culture has been a long-debated topic.  Does art depict what actually exists in our culture, or does the art dictate what exists.  It’s a classic chicken/egg debate.   And this ongoing debate occasionally rears its head in the video game space in the form of criticisms, and even

A common misunderstanding about trademark law involves what is actually necessary in order to “own” a trademark. There are a number of requirements that many companies miss if the company doesn’t do its research or hire an attorney. In fact, a company can file an application to register a mark and obtain a registration, but