A restauranteur was hoping to open a seafood restaurant chain in Texas and California called The Krusty Krab, to which the owners of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” TV series objected by filing a lawsuit for common law trademark infringement. Viacom’s...
Month: May 2018
More back to the basics: design patents
Last week we talked about the most common type of U.S. patent — the utility patent. In that post, we described that utility patents protect invented objects and processes, speaking broadly. Today, we will touch more on the design patent. Our last post...
Can Talking Sports In a Barbershop Be Copyrighted?
If you’re having a discussion about the most successful sports figures of the last decade, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James and University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban have to be in the mix.James has led teams to three National Basketball...
Back to the basics: What is a utility patent?
The most common kind of patent granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is the utility patent, awarded for a new or improved process, machine, device, product, or composition of matter. For an invention to be patentable as a utility patent, it must be new,...
U.S. patents: Roots, evolution and new developments
World Intellectual Property Day was April 26th. We just finished a series of posts celebrating this year’s theme: the ingenuity of girls and women as reflected in their new innovations and inventions that will advance the fields of health, technology,...