The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a lower court opinion today in the case of Cariou v. Prince and handed another victory to the perhaps surprisingly robust world of contemporary collage artistry and appropriation art generally. The story of the case is relatively straight forward. In 2000, Patrick Cariou published (...) [Read More]
Author Archives: Christopher F. Lonegro
Will Prior Art Block My Patent Application? Prior Art 101 for §§102 and 103
April 22, 2013
If you read IP blogs with any regularity you no doubt know that patent reform has come courtesy of the America Invents Act (“AIA”), although the “old” patent law hasn’t really left us and won’t for quite some time. The most blogged about change brought on by the AIA has undoubtedly been the change from (...) [Read More]
You Bought It, Now Dispose Of It How You Please
April 12, 2013
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Docket No. 11-697) that the copyright “first-sale” doctrine trumps a copyright holder’s right to control distribution of products embodying copyright protected material. The decision has received a fair amount of attention in the legal sphere but less so in (...) [Read More]
Mexico becomes third Latin American country to join the Madrid trademark filing system
December 4, 2012
In June I posted about Columbia’s accession to the Madrid Protocol and noted that Mexico was taking steps to follow suit. Late last month Mexico’s Secretary of Economy deposited documents completing the country’s accession to the Madrid Protocol for the International Registration of Marks with the World Intellectual Property Organization, bringing to 89 the total (...) [Read More]
Is Software Patentable?
October 10, 2012
We may soon have an answer to that question. By “soon” I mean probably sometime in the next two years. By “answer” I mean we will have the en banc opinion of the Federal Circuit in the case of CLS Bank v. Alice Corp. Yesterday, the Federal Circuit granted CLS Bank’s petition for rehearing and (...) [Read More]
A Divided Court on Divided Patent Infringement
September 25, 2012
The Federal Circuit’s recently issued decision in the cases of Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc. and McKesson Technologies, Inc. v. Epic Systems Corp. received less attention than its importance might have warranted, perhaps because Apple’s win over Samsung in the patent litigation between the Smartphone giants occurred at about the same time and (...) [Read More]
Trademark protection under the Madrid Protocol gains a foothold in South America
June 19, 2012
Last year I posted about how even small and midsized companies can use the Madrid system to extend protection of their U.S. trademark registrations overseas. To recap, the Madrid System allows trademark owners to file a single application seeking an International Registration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) and then enables registrants to designate (...) [Read More]
WWW.[YOUR NAME HERE]
June 14, 2012
On the heels of the new .XXX top level domain (TDL) that recently began providing internet addresses for adult oriented websites (for a fee), ICANN (the non-profit organization that controls the Internet addressing scheme) released a list of additional applicants for other new top level domains. ICANN voted to begin allowing customized TLD’s in June (...) [Read More]
Descriptive trademarks are a pain in the…
April 18, 2012
…neck to police. Just ask Chipotle Mexican Grill which is receiving some mild ridicule from numerous trademark blogs for its recent suit against Kroger supermarkets. Chipotle Mexican Grill accuses Kroger of trying to profit from and trade off of the goodwill that the restaurant chain has developed in its brand by selling ready-to-eat chicken entrees (...) [Read More]
Eminem And The Temptations Have More Than Just Detroit In Common
April 2, 2012
While digital piracy continues, major record labels seem to have gotten a handle on making money from digital copies of songs from their music catalogs thanks in large part to the legitimacy conferred on digital music sales distribution by Apple’s iTunes store. Now the labels are finding themselves tripped up by long existing contracts with (...) [Read More]
