I write today regarding a squirrelly thought: are the benefits of registering a hashtag trademark almost always outweighed by the consequences? In light of a recent Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) ruling and the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure’s (“TMEP”) provisions, hashtag marks offer much less protection than traditional character-based marks,
Toward the end of last week, a couple of friendly ironmongers (John Welch and Ron Coleman) had an interesting dialogue on Twitter, with some great insights about creativity and the law.
John noted that copyright’s requirement of “originality” is not the same as the requirement of “novelty” in patent law. Ron then
— Jessica Gutierrez Alm, Attorney
Twitter, the social media giant, is being sued by its internet cousin, TWiT. TWiT, which initially stood for This Week in Tech, is a netcast network providing audio and video tech-related content. TWiT owns the registered service mark TWIT for visual and audio entertainment performances.
According to the
While many of us are working our way through the flood of thought-provoking analysis of Matal v. Tam, I’m taking a break with some lighter fare, namely, covfefe. In case you missed it, the viral non-word “covfefe” was born out of a supposedly meaninglessly typo (perhaps a misspelling of “coverage”) in one
By way of follow-up to Tim’s and David’s recent discussions about Rio2016 and related U.S. Olympic Committee trademark enforcement issues, it appears that a local Minnesota carpet cleaning business called Zerorez, is poised to press the issue of the USOC’s overreaching trademark policies by asking the federal district court in Minnesota to confirm it
-Wes Anderson, Attorney
As the hustle and bustle of the INTA 2016 Annual Meeting drew to a close yesterday, I reflected on the session “#HASHTAGS #EverythingYouNeedToKnow” from Tuesday. It seems trademark protection may not (yet) fit comfortably into the hashtag world.
DuetsBlog previously provided a helpful tutorial on the nuts and bolts of
-Martha Engel, Attorney
It’s rare that we focus on descriptions of goods or services here, but one of the most common reasons that a trademark for a brewery or winery is refused registration at the Trademark Office comes down to the description of services. “Brewery services” and “winery services” are popular descriptions often used by
-Martha Engel, Attorney
Emojis – those cute images you may find in a keyboard on your Android or iPhone device – have changed the way many people communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings and concepts. They can add a certain level of pizzazz to an otherwise ordinary text message, Facebook post, or tweet. And, if I may
– Debbie Laskey, MBA
These days, as newspapers and magazines are on the wane, it seems as if anyone who can write has become an online journalist to promote his or her area of expertise. In social media lingo, the title is now known as a “blogger.”
According to Wikipedia, “A blogger is a
— Jessica Gutierrez Alm, Attorney
Google changed its logo this week, and the Internet is not happy about it. In the new design, the name appears in thicker, cleaner letters. Specifically, the new design eliminates serifs—the little tails at the bottom of each letter in many fonts, like Times New Roman.