Claims for trademark infringement and false advertising under the Lanham Act do not apply to allegedly false assertions of “authorship of a creative work,” according to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In M. Arthur Gensler, Jr. & Associates, Inc. v. Jay Marshall Strabala, the court…
CNN reports that French Shoe Designer Christian Louboutin lost the first round of a trademark lawsuit seeking to protect his iconic red soled high heels. Louboutin’s lawyer blasted the Court’s decision and vowed he would fight on in an appeal. The story explains that many designers want to use…
“Lars Johnson Has Goats on His Roof and a Stable of Lawyers to Prove It — Having Trademarked the Ungulate Look, Restaurateur Butts Heads With Imitators.” By JUSTIN SCHECK And STU WOO The article discusses how a simple marketing idea of goats on a roof (which is simply a…
Movie Studios Can Subpoena Internet Users’ Names, Data In File-Sharing Cases AP reports: A federal judge on Friday allowed the holder of a movie copyright to subpoena the names of people accused of illegally downloading and distributing a film over the Internet. Courts have held that Internet subscribers do…
A recent decision by the Seventh Circuit caught the notice of our Illinois trademark infringement litigators. Schering-Plough Healthcare Products Inc. v. Schwarz Pharma, Inc. et al, Nos. 09-1438, 09-1462, 09-1601 (7th Cir. Oct. 29, 2009) is a dispute between the original maker of a laxative whose patent has expired…
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported on the perils faced by start-up business when faced with a trade mark infringement lawsuit filed against it by a large established corporation: Jimmy Winkelmann started a clothing company several years ago to mock fellow students who wore the outdoorsy…
Google, the target of multiple online trademark infringement lawsuits, made a preemptive strike back in early August when it countersued the named plaintiff in a pending case against it. According to law professor Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog, Google sued John Beck Amazing Profits, LLC, in the…
Our Chicago Internet trademark infringement litigation lawyers were interested to see a recent lawsuit with a new twist on the trademark infringement claims corporations are bringing against online companies. According to the Dallas Business Journal, Mary Kay v. Yahoo!, a pending lawsuit filed July 6 in Dallas federal court, does…
As Illinois online trademark infringement attorneys, our interest was piqued when we saw an Aug. 4 article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger about civil and criminal charges against a man accused of outright stealing a domain name. P2P.com, LLC v. Goncalves et al, pending in New Jersey federal court, accuses…
Our Chicago trademark litigation lawyers noticed a recent trademark law decision that underscores the difficulty of protecting a mark in the emerging world of Internet commerce. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 30 that the hotel review and search Web site Hotels.com may not trademark its name…