Trademark, Copyright & Advertising Litigation

The shape of a building can be registered as inherently distinctive trade dress in the United States – if it is distinctive and unusual for buildings of that type – holds the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in a pair of precedential decisions published this summer.

The Trademark Modernization of 2020 went into effect on December 18, 2021. Applicants and registrants now have new tools at their disposal to clear the federal register of unused trademarks and the USPTO can move applications through the registration process more efficiently.

Once again, a decision by the Federal Circuit has been overturned by the Supreme Court. In its April 23, 2020, ruling vacating and remanding the decision in Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., the Supreme Court resolved a split in the Circuit Courts by rejecting the proposition that trademark infringement must be willful to warrant an award of disgorgement of a trademark infringer’s profits.

Vibram – seller of the “FiveFinger” shoes – took an intellectual property insurance coverage dispute to the highest court of Massachusetts, and won. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the insurers must pay Vibram’s cost of defending a lawsuit brought by the family of the late marathoner, Abebe Bikila.

Many people are surprised to learn that Hillary Clinton was an intellectual property attorney when she practiced law from 1977-1992 for the Rose Law Firm.

Trade dress is a type of trademark intellectual property right that can protect almost any unique identifying aesthetic design used by a company, from the shape of a product, to the appearance of a website, to the decor of a storefront.

In an Initial Decision announced February 6, 2015, Chief Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell of the Federal Trade Commission held that ECM BioFilms, Inc. d/b/a Enviroplastics International made false and unsubstantiated claims that plastics made with its additive “would completely biodegrade, including in a landfill, in a time period ranging from 9 months to 5 years.”