The record shows that a “zombie” is a “human … who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated.” You know it’s a good day when you come across that sentence in a legal document. What caused the United States Patent Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to take notice of that fact? Read on to find out about the case of Walt Disney’s Cinderella v. Zombie Cinderella. Kindly step all the way in please and make room for everyone. There’s no turning back now.
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Craft Beer Trademarks: Beer vs. Wine
December 2, 2014
If you encounter a wine and a beer with the same brand name, would you assume that they came from the same company? Would you think your favorite winery had expanded into the beer market, or your favorite brewer had begun bottling wine as well? This is the essence of a longstanding issue in trademark law. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) tends not to allow a trademark application for beer to proceed if the same or a similar mark is registered for wine, and vice versa. Does this really make sense? And what can be done about it?
Can a Toothbrush be a Product Design Trademark?
November 18, 2014
In theory, anything that identifies the source of a product or service can be a trademark. This includes not just words and logos, but colors, sounds, and packaging (which falls under the related category of trade dress.) What about a product design trademark? Philips recently tested the boundaries of this issue with a US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) application to register the base assembly of an electric toothbrush as a trademark.
Copyright Transformative Use Issue: Where Are We Now?
November 12, 2014
I’ve written about Fair Use before (to see some of my previous posts on the topic, check out my blog’s handy new search function.) The hottest topic in fair use these days is, without question, the copyright transformative use issue. What does it mean to say the use of someone else’s copyrighted work is “transformative,” and how are the courts ruling on this topic?
