Two recent federal court decisions reflect a judicial willingness to extend the traditional bounds of publicity rights, affording both current and former National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes the opportunity to share in the revenues earned from commercial use of their names and likenesses in videogames, live game telecasts, and other licensed products. Under the

Last year we reported on the hotly debated ruling of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (“USPTO”) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) in Blackhorse v. Pro Football, Inc., which cancelled six trademarks belonging to the Washington Redskins football team on the grounds that those marks were disparaging to Native Americans.  While the district court

In a rare precedential opinion, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) affirmed a refusal to register the trademark ROYAL KATE for use on cosmetics, handbags, bedding and apparel.  The Board found that this mark falsely suggests a connection with Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and, more famously, wife of Prince William, and

PART TWO This is part two of this blog series. Part one can be found here. Approvals/Controls This is one of the threshold questions for producers seeking to adapt formats  – how much control, if any, will the originator of the format have over the adaptation? On one hand, the format originator has a creative and

A growing and unsettling trend in the legal field of domain name disputes is the prevalence of domain registration for bad faith purposes, such as to bait the public into thinking that there is an association between a website operator and a famous brand or person.  Recently, Cowan DeBaets Abraham & Sheppard LLP (“CDAS”) brought

This Blog is an Update to a Previous Post. To read the original post, please click here. Jordan v. Jewel Food Stores, Inc., No. 10-c-340 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 12, 2015) Following the Seventh Circuit decision that permitted Jordan to proceed and allege violations under Illinois publicity law against the supermarket chain Jewel-Osco, Jordan moved for

On January 21, 2015, in its first substantive trademark ruling in more than a decade, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that the question of “tacking” – a doctrine by which a brand owner may modify its mark overtime without disrupting its priority of rights – is a factual one, more appropriately suited for

Note: This blog is cross-posted from Law360.com with permission from Portfolio Media, Inc. For decades, obtaining an injunction in a copyright or trademark case was simple: Show success on the merits (or likely success on the merits, at the preliminary injunction stage), and injunctive relief was usually automatically yours. Then, in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a

In a recent decision, the Third Circuit announced that it would no longer presume irreparable harm for plaintiffs requesting preliminary injunctive relief for claims arising under the Lanham Act (see Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., No. 13-2290 (Aug. 26, 2014)).  Instead, claimants seeking to enjoin acts of trademark infringement or false advertising must