Balancing Power and Innovation: A Dilemma
Small and large businesses both face challenges during collaborative efforts that ultimately lead to legal disputes, including the difficulty of protecting copyright while simultaneously promoting innovation. With Disney as a case study, this article posits that legal professionals are tasked with finding the balance between encouraging stricter copyright protections, encouraging further innovation and creativity, and better defining contributory liability.
When Identity Becomes a Brand: What the Beckham Family’s Trademarks Teaches Us
Trademark law protects names as indicators of brand origin, not as expressions of personal identity. Trademark law transforms names, such as the Beckham family’s names, into economic assets, which ultimately matters in the era of personal branding.
AI, Copyright, and the Courts: <em> Bartz v. Anthropic </em>
How the court clarified fair-use boundaries and accelerated the rise of licensing markets for AI training data.
Open Gaming Licenses and Alternatives: How Roleplaying Games are Protecting Their Copyrights
From a legal standpoint, Creative Commons licenses present a stark trade-off for commercial tabletop ecosystems: enabling privatization of community-built derivatives, or effectively foreclosing creators’ ability to reserve proprietary storylines or monetizable supplements. Publishers have adopted bespoke open-gaming frameworks that calibrate grants, attribution, irrevocability, and registration mechanics to preserve downstream creativity while managing litigation risk and market incentives. The real question is whether these companies should be responsible for balancing these values without any guidance from a federal government that is constitutionally empowered to strike that balance fairly.
Copyright Trolls and the Potential Impact on Contributory Copyright Infringement: What Adult Film Companies’ Lawsuits may Indicate about Internet Service Providers’ Liability
A pornographic production company has exploited the legal system by filing lawsuits alleging copyright infringement. The company tracks potential infringers’ IP addresses and subpoenas their internet service providers (“ISPs”) to locate defendants. Other copyright holders utilize similar tactics to bring claims of contributory copyright infringement. ISPs are privy to their users’ information, and copyright trolls rely on subpoenas to gather essential data. Since the information supplied by ISPs is vital to pursuing these contributory copyright infringement claims, ISPs may possibly be held liable for their involvement in their subscribers’ conduct.
HAVEN VS. HAVEN Where artist’s names clash over similarity
This blog explores a 2024 case on how similar artist stage names can be found in determining trademark infringement and how that reasoning may apply to a recent social media dispute.
<em>Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp.</em>
In Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp., the Federal Circuit held that using machine learning models in new data environments constitutes an abstract idea and lacks patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, equating machine learning models to computers, or computer software, and signaling the need for advancement or innovation if novel applications of machine learning models are to be patentable.
A Patent Tale as Old as Time: Rolex’s Dynapulse and the Mechanical Watch Industry’s IP Shift
Rolex protects its new movement system with 16 patents patents. Rolex also submitted seven patent applications for the Dynapulse escapement alone. Rolex’s Dynapulse patents represent an aggressive IP strategy in an industry where the 200-year-old Swiss lever movement system has long been universal. Does Rolex’s approach protect innovation or create worrying barriers for independent players in the watch industry?
In the Race Towards Trademark Protection, Female Athletes are Left Behind.
The fight for equal compensation for the use of an athlete’s NIL in collegiate athletics is far from over, but how do the implications resulting from current NIL litigation reflect the discrepancies in the broader trademark application pool?
C’est ce ne pas une “skort”: <em>How is one small creator trying to fight against the increasingly popular dupe culture with design patents?</em>
With the rise of fast fashion and the popularity of dupes, creators and designers are becoming increasingly frustrated with their work being copied and duped at a far faster rate than before. Cassey Ho, also known as Blogilates, is trying to fight the David and Goliath fight by using design patents and other methods to protect her and her team’s brand.
Copyrighted Images on Social Media
Perfect 10 established that copyright infringement occurs when content is stored on an entity’s server, thus establishing the server test. However, if the purpose, character, nature, portion, and effect of the work on the market substantially differ, then infringement is not present. Hunley implemented the Perfect 10 decision in social media, determining that while a social media platform hosts the photograph on its server, the platform’s terms of use likely grant the social media platform a license.
<em>USAA v. PNC Bank</em> Federal Circuit Decision Discussion
This article analyzes the Federal Circuit’s decision in USAA v. PNC Bank, which invalidated PNC’s mobile check-deposit patent under 35 U.S.C. § 101. It examines the ‘638 patent, PNC’s competing mobile check-deposit technology, and procedural history, focusing on the application of the Alice/Mayo test to determine the patent eligibility of financial technology innovations.
Earning a Fair Share: Where Copyright Law Falls Short for Creators and What Policies Have Narrowed the Divide
Musicians have long battled to be fairly compensated for the value of their work. Through strategic negotiations by the industries top artists and policymakers taking a stand, the scale is beginning to tilt in their favor.
Tension Between Fair Use Doctrine and Right to Publicity
This post explores how social media platforms, such as Cameo, have created tension between celebrities and public figures’ rights to monetize their image and control their public personas with the audience’s right to critique and comment on them under the Copyright Act’s Fair Use doctrine.
Evergreening: The Backbone of Pharmaceutical Patents
This blog introduces Evergreening and its impact on the pharmaceutical industry's control of their intellectual property.
<em>Strava v. Garmin</em>: Who is Infringing on Who?
Things are Heat(map)ing up in this Segment Between Strava and Garmin
Who Owns the BU?
An analysis of the recent copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Baylor University against Boston University for allegedly using a confusingly similar interlocking BU logo.
Post-era of Lanham Act: a brief discussion after <em>Matal v. Tam</em> and <em>Iancu v. Brunetti</em> with the concern of Trademark Freedom v. International Adaptability
This blog examines how Matal v. Tam and Iancu v. Brunetti affected U.S. trademark law trends under the First Amendment and the challenges these “immoral or scandalous” marks may face when seeking protection across international borders.
Barbie Setting an Example in Color Trademarks
Mattel’s policing of the Barbie Pink color sets an example for limiting the use of a color without the need for a registered trademark.
Trademark Infringement in the Era of Luxury Resale
This blog explores the Southern District of New York Court’s decision in Chanel v. What Goes Around Comes Around (“WGACA”) revolving around trademark infringement, its application of the Lanham Act, and potential effects on the luxury resale market.