Last month, in Sandy Routt, d/b/a sandybeachgifts.com, d/b/a Sandys Beach v. Amazon.com, Inc., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed claims seeing to hold Amazon.com vicariously liable for the copyright and trademark infringing activities of its affiliate marketing partners. Amazon.com maintains a program in which third party websites agree to display a widget that contains

After years of intense discussion and debate, the new generic top-level domain names (known as gTLDs) are here.  And they have been popular:  when .club went live on May 7, 2014, over 32,000 domain names ending in .club sold in the first 24 hours, and nearly 30,000 more were sold over the next three weeks.

In a decision that has been met with considerable praise and controversy, on June 18, 2014, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office ordered the cancellation of six U.S. federal trademark registrations owned by the NFL’s Washington Redskins on the grounds that the use of the term “redskins”

A legal battle is brewing: punk/heavy metal icon Glenn Danzig has sued his former Misfits bandmate, renowned bassist and singer Gerald “Jerry Only” Caiafa, for violations of various Misfits trademarks and logos. Following in the footsteps of Black Flag  the filed complaint is another example of former bandmates’ battles over merchandise that remains profitable long

A recent decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia serves as a cautionary tale for trademark applicants seeking to challenge adverse decisions rendered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (“USPTO”) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (the “TTAB”).  On January 3, 2014, the Court in Shammas v. Focarino ruled that applicants

A federal court in Washington gave some “Peace of Mind” to former members of legendary rock band Boston when it denied Boston’s band leader a preliminary injunction in a trademark dispute.  Plaintiff Donald Thomas Scholz (“Scholz”) is the founder and band leader of Boston, and undisputed owner of all of Boston’s trademarks.  Fran Migliaccio and

On June 21, 2013, a Central District of California court refused to extend ACPA safe harbor protection to popular domain name registrar GoDaddy.com, finding that it intended to profit from the registration and maintenance of various domain names that encompassed plaintiff Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ OSCAR, OSCARS, OSCAR NIGHT, ACADEMY AWARD and

Overturning a lower court decision, the Second Circuit determined, in Kelly-Brown v. Winfrey, that Oprah must defend a trademark infringement lawsuit despite her argument that the trademark fair use doctrine shielded her production company’s use of the slogan “Own Your Power” in connection with its publications and other media offerings.

The burden of showing fraud in a trademark filing is ever-evolving but always high. A similarly high standard applies when it comes to meeting the “exceptional case” requirement for an award of attorneys’ fees for the prevailing party. Nevertheless, some cases involve such obvious wrongdoing that the burdens can be met before discovery even opens.