Concerns Raised Over ICANN’S gTLD Proposal

The gross imbalance between “offense” (cybersquatting) and “defense” (brand protection) is overarching concern if ICANN allows more generic top-level domains.  Read more here.

US Chamber of Commerce Makes Recommendations for USPTO Reform

The Chamber’s recommendations address the need to:

• Improve the quality of US patents;
• Provide adequate resources to do the job;
• Reform the patent examiner production system;
• Improve the timeliness of administrative actions;
• Strengthen the PTO’s relationship with the user community;
• Enhance organizational management;
• Appoint a well-qualified undersecretary and director;
• Permit applicants to defer patent examination;
• Rethink the current fee schedule; and
• Enhance efficiency of the examination process by reforming examiner and applicant incentives.

Stanford University v. Stanford Financial Group v. Stanfordfinancial.net

According to Caribbean Net News, Stanford Financial Group presently is in the midst of two trademark disputes, one as a defendant and the other as plaintiff.

Filing Application for Copyright Registration Does Not Create Presumption Work is Copyrightable

CHM Industries Inc. v. Structural and Steel Products, Inc. (N.D. Tex., No. 4:08-CV-454-Y, 10/24/2008).  The mere filing of a copyright registration application, as opposed to having an actual certificate of registration, does not trigger the presumption that a plaintiff in a copyright action holds a valid copyright interest in the work at issue.  In denying the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, the court held that the plaintiff had not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of its copyright claim.

Registration for Bose WAVE Mark Canceled for Fraud

Bose Corp. v. Hexawave, Inc., 88 USPQ2d 1332 (TTAB 2007) - Although unrelated to the issue of likelihood of confusion based on other Bose registrations for which the TTAB ruled in favor of Bose, US Trademark Registration No. 1,633,789 for the mark WAVE used in connection with radios, clock radios, audio tape recorders and players, etc., was canceled for fraud.  Bose had stopped making and selling audio tape recorders and players in 1997, but it renewed its registration for the mark in 2001 and continued to list those goods in the identification of goods.  Transporting previously purchased recorders and players which Bose had repaired was not considered use in commerce.

ASM Receives Implied Nonexclusive Copyright License in Software

Asset Marketing Systems, Inc. v. Gagnon, 88 USPQ2d 1343, 1348 (9th Cir. 2008) - An implied license is granted when (i) a person (licensee) requests the creation of the work; (ii) the creator (licensor) makes that particular work and delivers it to the licensee who requested it; and (iii) the licensor intends that the licensee copy and distribute the work.

High School and Booster Club Battle Over Use of School Name

The Judson Independet School District reportedly is in the midst of a dispute with its booster club over use of the mark JUDSON ROCKETS by third parties, which is cutting into the booster club’s proceeds from sales of merchandise bearing the mark. 

Booster club volunteer Alan Caudell filed US Trademark Application Serial No. 77/439,823 for the mark JUDSON ROCKETS in class 25 for t-shirts among other things.  A Notice of Allowance issued on November 11, 2008.  The applicant has not yet submitted a Statement of Use and specimen.

Free Software Foundation Sues Cisco for Copyright Infringement

As reported in Information Week, the Free Software Foundtion (FSF) has sued Cisco  Systems in the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement. 

FSF initiated development of the GNU Project, which resulted in several open source computer programs for which FSF owns the copyrights.  FSF distributes the programs according to the terms of public licenses, i.e., the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, and the GNU Lesser General Public License versions 2 and 2.1 (LGPL).  Under the terms of the licenses, FSF grants permission to third parties to copy, modify, and re-distribute the software on the condition that licensees include access to their source code.

In its Complaint, FSF alleges Cisco failed to make its source code available and that it therefore did not have permission to re-distribute FSF’s software.  As a result, Cisco is accused of infringing FSF’s copyrights in its software.