A License to Ask Questions

When a company is growing, they begin selling more products and often start exploring options like distribution agreements and licensing agreements.  When looking into those agreements, it important that the terms and scope of the agreement are understood by both parties and written down. Terms of the agreement can include scope restrictions such as whether … Read more

Lift With Your Head

  Original image from Everkinetic Cybersquatting is generally bad faith registration of another’s trademark in a domain name.  Under section 43(d) of the Lanham Act (also known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act or ACPA), a person shall be liable to the owner of a trademark if that person has a bad faith intent to … Read more

Don’t Cross the Red Cross Trademark

Federal law prohibits anyone other than the American National Red Cross and “its duly authorized employees and agents and the sanitary and hospital authorities of the armed forces of the United States from using the Greek red cross on a white ground or the words ‘Red Cross’ or ‘Geneva Cross.’”  The law states that “[w]hoever wears … Read more

This Split is Bananas

The right to create derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of the owner of a copyright. A “derivative work,” according to 17 U.S.C. §101, “is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any … Read more

Chicken in Black (and Orange-Red)

Trademarks can be anything that tells me as a customer that this product or services that I am trying to buy today came from the same source as the last time I bought it.  Or put another way, when my nephew has something on his wish list, what can I use to make sure that … Read more

Wondering about Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is material created by fans of a piece of work rather than the owners or creators.  Movies, television shows and books all have fans that have spun off their own stories, drawings, movies and more.  The fans take characters created by another on new adventures, some within canonical fictional universe, some decidedly not.  … Read more

Tale of Two Tables

The owner of copyright has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or … Read more