Patent Baristas

Duncan Bucknell, over at the IP ThinkTank, discusses FIFA’s response to the women arrested after wearing orange miniskirts bearing the Bavaria beer company logo to a recent match. Duncan posits that FIFA was not on good legal footing but has sold a lot of beer for their sponsor’s competitor. Barbara Castelein and Mirthe Nieuwpoort were […]

I have blogged in the past about non-traditional trademarks. However the recent case of North Face and South Butt begs the discussion of trade dress and hence a comparison of the case in question with the precedents is unavoidable to glean whether South Butt does infringe North Face’s trade dress amongst other issues. Almost everybody […]

Trademarks have been in existence since as early as 5000 B.C. Humans have an unmistakable desire to use marks to designate ownership- either as property owner or as manufacturer. It is probable that primitive man used marks to indicate ownership of livestock. Later marks were used to indicate the maker of goods and their obligation […]

Lighting up the law web pages these days is the lawsuit by the law firm Jones Day against BlockShopper LLC and two individuals associated with the website, for allegedly using Jones Day’s service marks and linking to its website in at least two articles discussing Chicago real estate transactions of Jones Day associates.  Jones Day […]

Johnson & Johnson has sued the American Red Cross, an indisputably highly regarded charitable organization, over ARC’s “commercial” use of the red cross symbol trademark. It seems that the ARC has been licensing others to use the symbol in connection with first-aid type products sold in retail stores. To raise money, of course. That’s generally […]