The Supreme Court is Set to Hear a Copyright Case with Big Implications for U.S. Tech Innovation
29 08 2022Bob Zeidman
August 15, 2022
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Categories : Copyright, Fair Use
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The move has the potential to further shake up the scientific publishing industry, which has already adopted preprint archives, similar mandates from other funding organizations, and greatly expanded access to publications during the pandemic.
The content in this post was found at https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/us-government-to-make-all-research-it-funds-open-access-on-publication/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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Tech Dirt
Timothy Geigner
Aug 16th 2022
. . .
Which brings us to the present, where Harpo Inc. is suing a podcast put out by history professors as a journalistic product covering the history of Oprah and her show.
Harpo Inc., which owns her trademarks, carefully vets any licensing opportunity. Now it’s taking a podcasting duo to court over what it says is an unauthorized attempt to capitalize on “The Oprah Effect.” Harpo Inc. is suing Kellie Carter Jackson and Leah Wright Rigueur over their Oprahdemics podcast.
Roulette Productions launched Oprahdemics in March and ended its first season with a live show at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. Its key art, which is embedded below, includes a dictionary-style definition of the term — defined as “the study of the Queen of Talk” — as well as a large O and the outstretched arms of a woman. The defendants also operate oprahdemics.com and multiple social media sites.According to Harpo Inc., this branding misleads the public into thinking that Oprah is somehow involved in all of this. Please note that that’s the sole claim here. To Harpo’s credit, the company isn’t asking for monetary damages or profits from the podcast. It doesn’t want the podcast shut down or the subject matter to change.
“However, Harpo submits that the Court should enjoin Defendants from wrongfully creating a new brand incorporating Harpo’s trademarks and making trademark use which is dilutive of and constitutes misuse of Harpo’s OPRAH and O family of trademarks and explicitly misleads consumers as to the source and/or sponsorship of Defendants’ branded offerings.”
. . .
The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/16/oprah-sues-podcast-about-oprah-for-branding-that-includes-oprah-trademarks/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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LexBlog/99 Park Row
Jessica R. Corpuz
August 18, 2022
Many people associate brands with particular colors – if you think of Tiffany & Co., you think of its famous robins-egg blue boxes and branding; if you think of Barbie, you can see the bright pink that came with so many childhood toys. Not many people realize, however, that brands can trademark those colors and prevent others from using them. . . .
However, not everyone can trademark a color. There are two key hurdles to obtaining a color trademark. First, the color has to distinguish the business’s goods and identify that business as the source of the goods. If the color is commonly used by all business in the space, the trademark may be rejected. For example, Cheerios was denied a trademark largely on the grounds that many kinds of breakfast cereal use the same or similar color yellow. The court found that it had not acquired enough “distinctiveness” in the eyes of consumers.
Second, the color cannot serve a functional purpose. For example, Pepto-Bismol was denied a trademark on the color pink because of the color’s “therapeutic value” in treating upset stomachs. The court reasoned that Pepto-Bismol’s competitors might want to use that color in order to compete effectively in the market.
New brands should be wary of using colors that are already trademarked or heavily identified with a particular brand. . . .
[ed’s note: think John Deere Green and Cat Yellow]
The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2022/08/18/corporations-can-own-colors-and-they-can-sue-you-for-using-their-color/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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One of the primary arguments for enacting the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) in 2016 was the perceived need for the protection of the trade secrets of U.S. companies abroad. These issues received significant media attention with the focus far and away on China; by way of example, 60 Minutes cited the Justice Department as saying “the scale of China’s corporate espionage is so vast it constitutes a national security emergency, with China targeting virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, and costing American companies hundreds of billions of dollars in losses — and more than two million jobs.” A consensus emerged that existing civil trade secret remedies at the state court level were inadequate. These concerns led to calls for a robust federal statute that would provide a civil remedy empowering federal courts to assert their jurisdiction over parties outside the United States. An important decision issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last year, Motorola Solutions v. Hytera Communications Corp., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35942 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 31, 2020), paved the way for other federal courts over the past year to exercise jurisdiction over international actors and international conduct under the DTSA. This blog post summarizes these recent decisions.
. . .
Takeaway: As these cases over the past 18 months illustrate, federal courts are willing to apply the DTSA to foreign parties who have taken actions that further acts of misappropriation. These decisions are an important first step in furthering the DTSA’s goal of protecting U.S. companies’ trade secrets that are misappropriated abroad.
The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2021/09/27/trade-secrets-without-borders-the-defend-trade-secret-acts-promise-as-an-extra-territorial-statute-finally-comes-to-pass/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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LexBlog/99 Park Row
James Aquilina
September 27, 2021
In a recent decision, the Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (“Board”) reversed an examiner’s prior refusal to register a copyright in the artistic elements present in the bed shown above, paving the way for the applicant to obtain a copyright registration in this work.
Copyright law does not protect useful articles per se (i.e., articles having a useful function that does not serve merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information), but does protect any artistic feature that is applied to or incorporated in a useful article, if the feature: “(1) can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate from the useful article and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work—either on its own or fixed in some other tangible medium of expression—if it were imagined separately from the useful article into which it is incorporated.” Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc., 137 S. Ct 1002, 1007 (2017).
The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2021/09/27/design-protection-dont-sleep-on-copyrights/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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LexBlog/99 Park Row
Jim Soong
September 1 2021
Note: First published in The Intellectual Property Strategist and Law.com.
This article is Part Two of a Three-Part Article Series
Artificial intelligence is changing industry and society, and metrics at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reflect its impact. In a recent publication, the USPTO indicated that from 2002 to 2018 the share of all patent applications relating to artificial intelligence grew from 9% to approximately 16%. See “Inventing AI, Tracing the diffusion of artificial intelligence with U.S. patents,” Office of the Chief Economist, IP Data Highlights (October 2020). For the foreseeable future, patent applications involving artificial intelligence technologies, including machine learning, will increase with the continued proliferation of such technologies. However, subject matter eligibility can be a significant challenge in securing patents on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
This three-part article series explores USPTO handling of Alice issues involving artificial intelligence and machine learning through a sampling of recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions. See Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014). Some decisions dutifully applied USPTO guidelines on subject matter eligibility, including Example 39 thereof, to resolve appeal issues brought to the PTAB. In one case, the PTAB sua sponte offered eligibility guidance even with no Alice appeal issue before it. These decisions inform strategies to optimize patent drafting and prosecution for artificial intelligence and machine learning related inventions.
Part One can be viewed here.
Part Two
“No More Than Conceptual Advice To Use Machine Learning”
The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2021/09/01/artificial-intelligence-subject-matter-eligibility-u-s-patent-office-appeals-part-two Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com
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