Last week a federal lawsuit was filed in Minnesota by Blu Dot to protect alleged intellectual property rights in the floor lamp shown on the left below. The accused “strikingly and confusingly similar” floor lamp shown on the right below is sold by Canadian Rove Concepts:

stilt-floor-lamp-walnutNordicLamp

So, what type of intellectual property do you

elleQuestion for the day, how common is the given name Elle? I’m really not sure, I don’t believe I’ve ever personally known anyone with that name, and Mongabay doesn’t even include Elle in its listing of girl’s first names, but it does rank Ella (210), Elena (412), Ellie (1198), Elly (2802), and Ellamae (3514)

Social media impacts every facet of life and is often discussed in DuetsBlog posts. Courts are now having to address social media issues in connection with jurors. A federal judge in California is considering banning the use of social media altogether in a copyright case before him brought by Oracle America, Inc. against Google, Inc.

– Draeke Weseman, Weseman Law Office, PLLC

Intellectual property enforcement continues to make news, and new solutions to curb abusive enforcement – i.e. trademark bullying, patent trolling, and copyright trolling – are being proposed regularly. Central to these solutions is the idea of a “fast-lane” that kicks bad claims to

Last week, while I was preparing for and had the unique opportunity of arguing a real, live TTAB final hearing on the merits, outside the TTAB’s typical oral hearing location (because it was selected by the TTAB to be part of the ABA’s IPLSpring continuing education conference in Bethesda, Maryland), the Supreme Court issued its

We sounded the alarm exactly six months ago about a trademark case of great importance to brand owners: . Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case, and here is a link to the transcript (hat tip to Draeke).

As you will recall,

Lately we’ve been discussing more and more the difference between the right to register a trademark and the right to use a trademark. In many trademark disputes the perfect forum for an amicable resolution is the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the USPTO.

The TTAB can be a cost effective forum for parties

Every so often there is a moment when trademark types, marketing types and brand owners need to pay close attention to where the law could be headed. Today, I’m sounding the alarm.

If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to follow the advice it recently sought and received from the U.S. Solicitor General (SG) of the

–Ben Kwan, Attorney

This week, Under Armour, the Baltimore-based athletic apparel behemoth gave us a new take on the well-pleaded complaint.  Under Armour sued Florida-based I A Nutrition, Inc., for trademark infringement in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.  The complaint alleges infringement based on I A Nutrition’s use of the