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The Last Best Place to Trademark?

The Last Best Place to Trademark?

In recent years, Montana has been flooded by wealthy out-of-staters buying property. [1]  Montana’s historic economy was built on mining, timber, railroads, ranching and energy extraction; today, the economy is regularly injected by the income resident-retirees earn from their investments. Although Montanans are reportedly weary of these out-of-staters transforming their sprawling ranch lands into a retiree’s paradise, […]

USPTO, Courts: No need for inovation in software

USPTO, Courts: No need for inovation in software

Recent decisions by the US courts and Patent and Trademark Office have suggested a move towards the rejection of software patents.[1] This is likely an attempt to resolve the issuance of junk patents, the difficulty in developing software that doesn’t infringe existing patents, and the resulting patent-troll litigation.[2] Irrespective of the current problems, software should […]

Bill C-61 gives with one hand and takes away with the other: Granting time shifting rights but excluding library building

Bill C-61 gives with one hand and takes away with the other: Granting time shifting rights but excluding library building

Bill C-61 gives with one hand and takes away with the other: Granting time shifting rights but excluding library building Bell’s personal video recorder (PVR) featuring an external hard drive for archiving recorded television programs premiered when Bill C-61 was debated in Parliament. However, under Bill C-61, archiving recorded programs is illegal.  Time shifting is the […]

'Scrabulous' Gets a Nip-Tuck, Returns as 'Wordscraper'

'Scrabulous' Gets a Nip-Tuck, Returns as 'Wordscraper'

This summer, following threats of litigation by Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble board game’s copyright, the popular Facebook application Scrabulous was shut down, reworked, and relaunched as Wordscraper, featuring a new layout, design, and scoring system.  In the aftermath of these events, many Facebook users and content creators are confused.  Creators are wondering to what […]

"You’ll never work in this town again!" Retained memory is a trade secret.

"You’ll never work in this town again!" Retained memory is a trade secret.

Can workplace information retained in a person’s memory constitute a trade secret?  Until recently the answer was no, with courts applying trade secret protection to documents removed from an employer but not to those recreated from a former employee’s memory.  However, the Ohio Supreme Court recently reversed this rule in Al Minor & Assoc., Inc. […]

CIRA’s WHOIS Policy Strikes a Balance

CIRA’s WHOIS Policy Strikes a Balance

Update July 7, 2009: Jonathan Giraldi's post "CIRA’s WHOIS Policy Strikes a Balance" won the Gowlings LLP Best Blog in IP Law and Technology Prize Fall 2008 in Professor D'Agostino's IP class In a hotly-debated move, Canada’s internet domain registry authority has allowed select groups to request the personal information of domain registrants, after promising […]

American Airlines drops trademark lawsuit against Google

American Airlines drops trademark lawsuit against Google

When American Airlines filed a lawsuit last year against Google claiming trademark infringement, many people hoped that this case would clarify the otherwise confusing jurisprudence surrounding the issue- whether or not Google allowing advertisers to purchase trademarks as keywords for advertising- is trademark infringement. However, in July the companies stated in identical emails, that they […]

Economic Benefits Lie at the Heart of Patent Protection, Not Altruism

Economic Benefits Lie at the Heart of Patent Protection, Not Altruism

The ideas that an inventor’s time and investments should be protected and new inventions encouraged through the granting of patents, underlie some of the justifications of our current patent system.  Theorists such as Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham claim that patents are necessary to encourage invention at no social cost (1).  Professor Heller of Columbia Law […]

Only the Devil wears Prada: How “piracy” democratizes fashion for the rest of us

Only the Devil wears Prada: How “piracy” democratizes fashion for the rest of us

In fashion, the thin line between inspiration and “piracy” becomes increasingly blurred as fashion executives, designers, editors, and lawyers struggle to define what constitutes unethical imitation.  Daniel Drapeau, a lawyer representing high-profile clients, criticizes the lack of legal protection in Canada by questioning whether we should be encouraging “cheap chic merchants”.  Franco Rocchi of Le Chateau, […]

Top U.S. court scales back patent royalties

Top U.S. court scales back patent royalties

A recent landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in Quanta v. LG Electronics has effectively restricted patent-holders’ ability to claim infringement for subsequent uses of licensed products. This is the latest step by the top American court to circumscribe the scope of entitlements of patent-holders by limiting the ability of companies to collect […]