IP & Technology Law Trends
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Supreme Court Vindicates Restriction on Registering Trademarks Containing Personal Names
Citing the common law right to use one’s own name commercially and to prevent others from doing so, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 2024 upheld the constitutionality of a challenged restriction on trademark registration. Section 2(c) of the Lanham...
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Supreme Court Maintains Internet Safe Harbor Provisions … for Now
With little comment and reportage, the U. S. Supreme Court decided on May 18 that the “safe harbor” granted to the operators of online platforms precluded claims that an algorithmic process that allowed terrorist recruiting messages to be briefly ava...
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Second Time Lucky? Supreme Court Grants Cert in Jack Daniel’s Dog Toy Case
The United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari to Jack Daniel’s distillery in its appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision holding that a dog toy manufacturer’s use of the Jack Daniel’s trademarks and label design is expression protected by the Fir...
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Supreme Court to Review Trademark Territoriality
A few weeks ago, we wrote about a trademark territoriality case being presented to the U.S. Supreme Court. We write now with a follow-up: the Court has agreed to hear it.
The case is Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., and it prese...
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Supreme Court May Review Trademark Territoriality
Increased globalism brings with it a need to re-examine and clarify the territorial limitations traditionally applied to trademark rights. Should U.S. users of foreign trademarks and foreign users of U.S. trademarks be subject to the provisions and remedies of the Lanham Act irrespective of where sales—and damages—occur?
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The State is Still Free to Plunder Your Copyrights: Jim Olive Photography v. University of Houston
As we have covered here before, a state’s sovereign immunity can be an insurmountable barrier to holding any state entity liable for copyright infringement. In Allen v. Cooper, the Supreme Court held that Congress did not validly revoke state sovere...
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