Let’s say you’re a small-business owner with a website to provide customers information about your product or service. Your site speaks to trends, news items or important developments in your industry. You see on another website that an industry leader...
Month: March 2019
Carlton’s dance lawsuits come to an end
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor Alfonso Ribeiro has been in the news a lot since attempting to copyright his “Carlton” dance. At the beginning of this year, we wrote about how the actor took issue with the video game creators of Fortnite, who used a...
They are trade secrets only if you treat them as such
A federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois recently taught a painful lesson to a business owner. The plaintiff alleged that an employee had taken information that was important and sensitive enough to the company that it qualified as a trade secret.The judge...
Trademark rights in the iconic Chuck Taylor sneakers
Few, if any, shoe brands are more iconic than the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star High Top sneaker. Named after a basketball player and taken to market in 1932, Chucks have been the shoe of choice ever since, including by virtue of a gracefully pivot from athletic gear...
Supreme Court: Copyright must be registered before bringing infringement lawsuit – authored by Kyle Mendenhall
After today's Supreme Court decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, it is now more important than ever for copyright owners to file their registration applications with the Copyright Office as soon as possible. While an author gains...