(Podcast) The Briefing - The Doctrine of Foreign Equivalents: What It Means for Your Brand
5 Key Takeaways | Building a Winning Evidentiary Record at the PTAB (and Surviving Appeal)
Wolf Greenfield Attorneys Review 2024 and Look Ahead to 2025
Recognizing and Avoiding Trademark Scams and Hoaxes
The Briefing: A Very Patented Christmas – The Quirkiest Inventions for the Holiday Season
5 Key Takeaways | Alice at 10: A Section 101 Update
Director Review Under the USPTO's Final Rule – Patents: Post-Grant Podcast
(Podcast) The Briefing: Thirsty for Clarity – Brand Confusion In The Beverage Category
The Briefing: Thirsty for Clarity – Brand Confusion In The Beverage Category
SCOTUS and federal court rulings on TTAB decisions on granting trademarks and trademark renewals; Netflix settling an anticipated defamation case with a disclaimer and donation
Legal Alert: USPTO Proposes Major Change to Terminal Disclaimer Practice
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Artificial Intelligence Patents & Emerging Regulatory Laws
John Harmon on the Evolving Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Intellectual Property
Was the classic song “Over The Rainbow” plagiarized? How about a claim of copyright infringement against the script for “The Holdovers?” AI Legal strategies switch to claims of CMI removal
The Briefing: The Patent Puzzle: USPTO's Guidelines for AI Inventions
The Briefing: The Patent Puzzle: USPTO's Guidelines for AI Inventions (Podcast)
4 Key Takeaways | Updates in Standard Essential Patent Licensing and Litigation
Wolf Greenfield Attorneys Preview What’s Ahead in 2024
8 Key Takeaways | The Presumption of Irreparable Harm After the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020
(Podcast) The Briefing: SCOTUS to Determine if USPTO Refusal to Register TRUMP TOO SMALL is Unconstitutional
Suppose you want to register a trademark that identifies a source of goods/services for your business. What if the trademark on the specimen of use has punctuation that is different from the drawing of the trademark in the...more
Registering a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides significant legal benefits, including nationwide protection and the presumption of ownership. Federal registration is a smart investment for...more
A recent precedential decision enlarges the protection for foreign trademark owners. Plumrose Holding Ltd. v. USA Ham LLC, Opposition No. 91272970 (January 17, 2025). The decision is a nod to foreign trademark owners to...more
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) ruled that a state agency has no sovereign immunity to a trademark opposition proceeding. Mountain Gateway Order, Inc. v....more
Yesterday, in Vidal v. Elster, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 2(c) of the Trademark Act (15 U.S.C. § 1052(c)), which prohibits registration of a mark that “[c]onsists of or...more
In business, trademarks are everything. It's how consumers come to know, love and trust your brand. It's a valuable corporate asset, and many disputes can arise of name rights with the explosion of e-commerce and the...more
The US Patent & Trademark Office Trademark Trial & Appeal Board found that a consumer did not have standing to oppose an application for registration because the consumer failed to establish a commercial interest and injury...more
An application to register US SPACE FORCE as a trademark crashed at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) when the TTAB ruled that the mark caused a false suggestion of a...more
Suppose that you want to register a trademark that incorporates a name of a person to identify the source of goods or services for your business. Should you register your trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is amending the rules of practice in trademark cases to implement provisions of the Trademark Modernization Action of 2020 (TMA). Effective December 3, 2022, the period to...more
As college freshmen head to campus for the start of classes, there is one vital campus bookstore purchase before classes begin: a T-shirt bearing the college’s logo. This purchase is not only a rite of passage for freshmen;...more
In a recent precedential1 opinion, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board affirmed the refusal to register Jasmin Larian, LLC’s handbag design mark for “handbags” in Class 18, on the grounds...more
Thank you for reading the July 2022 issue of Sterne Kessler's MarkIt to Market® newsletter. This month, we discuss a recent precedential TTAB decision regarding product configuration marks. We also highlight recent...more
Future Intentions Not Enough to Pave the Road to Registration - “Reduces pain,” “alleviates anxiety,” “improves sleep” – these are just some of the claims of the miraculous CBD. The surfeit of new CBD brands and products...more
The September 2021 issue of Sterne Kessler's MarkIt to Market® newsletter discusses a recent non-precedential Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decision regarding intent-to-use applications covering CBD products currently...more
Suppose that you want to register a trademark that identifies a source of goods or services for your business. What if you file a federal trademark application and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refuses registration of...more
Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued a guidance document describing how they plan on following the Supreme Court’s recent decision in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com. This document...more
As we reported in our July 7, 2020 blog post on the USPTO v. Booking.com B.V decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a proposed mark consisting of the combination of a generic term and a generic top-level domain, like...more
Creativity abounds in the CBD industry – both in the wide variety of products infused with it, and in the efforts undergone by applicants trying to circumvent the Trademark Act to register per se unlawful CBD-infused...more
The U.S. Congress, as part of its Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed a measure giving the Director of the USPTO the authority to toll, waive, adjust, or modify any timing deadline under the...more
With the closure of “non-essential” businesses throughout the country and the world, the use of trademarks on and in connection with products and services may be interrupted or altogether halted for a period of time. This...more
In a non-precedential opinion issued this month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board affirmed the refusal to register Jos. A. Magnus & Co., LLC’s mark MAGNUS for “whiskey, gin, and...more
The continuing internal tension between various agencies and offices of the U.S. federal government over how to address the (seemingly) unstoppable growth of the marijuana industry in light of current federal law has been a...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) currently offers a pilot program that provides parties the opportunity to engage in expedited non-use cancellation proceedings. Broadly speaking, cancellation proceedings allow...more
We live in an era where news, information, and trends move very quickly. Words, phrases, or ideas that were obscure or non-existent yesterday can be the top trending story tomorrow. These overnight trends are now routinely...more