The #hashtag, once confined to Twitter, has become ubiquitous across virtually all social media platforms.  The hashtag (formerly known as the “pound” sign) has revolutionized the way information is organized, discovered, and shared online.  Social media users use hashtags – i.e., a keyword or phrase preceded by the hashtag symbol (#) – to identify social

Yesterday President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”), the culmination of several years of bipartisan efforts to federalize trade secret protection, placing it alongside the federal copyright, trademark, and patent statutes.  The DTSA – an extension of the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 – should be significant, generally, to businesses concerned

Yesterday, CDAS submitted an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the respondent in the case captioned Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (“Kirtsaeng II”), which will examine the proper standard for fee awards under the Copyright Act. The brief, filed on behalf of the Copyright Alliance, argues that when determining whether

The Ninth Circuit, applying California’ anti-SLAPP statute, affirmed the dismissal on First Amendment grounds of Master Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver’s right of publicity lawsuit, in which Sarver claimed that the Oscar®-winning film The Hurt Locker misappropriated his life story. According to Sarver, the film’s main character, Will James, was based on Sarver’s own life and experiences

Lord & Taylor has agreed to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint alleging that the national retailer deceived consumers by paying for native advertisements.

I. Introduction In light of the decision of October 15, 2015 invalidating the US/EU Safe Harbor (the “October Decision”), there is uncertainty surrounding compliance with EU Directive 95/46 (the “Directive”), which prohibits “the transfer of personal data to a third country which does not ensure an adequate level of protection.”  Although the United States Department

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York this month, a group of tattoo artists (through a licensing entity) sued the developer, publisher, and marketer of the immensely popular NBA 2K16 video game over digital depictions of tattoos the artists had inked on the real-life basketball players

Yesterday, CDAS submitted an amicus brief in a high-profile case involving the distribution of television programming over the Internet.  The brief, on behalf of the Copyright Alliance, was filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the appellants in the case captioned Fox Television Stations Inc. v. FilmOn X.  This is the

CDAS attorneys Nancy E. Wolff, Eleanor M. Lackman, Alex Gigante, and Brittany L. Kaplan filed an Amicus Curiae brief on behalf of the Text and Academic Authors Association; Western Writers of America, Inc.; The National Association of Science Writers, Inc.; and The Dramatists Guild in The Authors Guild et al. v. Google, Inc. The brief

In May we reported that a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had affirmed the USPTO’s denial of a registration for the trademark “THE SLANTS” to refer to an all-Asian-American rock band, but had, in a prescient “additional views” opinion, prompted en banc reconsideration.  A majority of the full Federal