Sandy's practice focuses on trademarks and unfair competition, copyright and advertising law, providing clients with a full range of services to help them sell, advertise and promote their products. She has extensive experience in brand name clearance and trademark portfolio management, advertising claims review and counseling on advertising and promotional content in both traditional and social media. LinkedIn
As we wrote in Part 1 of this series, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) was signed into law on December 27, 2020, and contained several significant amendments to the Lanham Act. This post will cover three of the legislative changes, all pertaining to…
The FTC recently announced a regulatory review of its Endorsement Guides, which provide guidance to marketers to ensure that endorsements and testimonials for products and services are not misleading, particularly as to whether there is a “material connection” between the endorser and the marketer. The…
Two recent decisions from the Western District of North Carolina in Winestore Holdings LLC v. Justin Vineyards & Winery LLC provide a tasting of the requirements for bringing a declaratory judgment action for non-infringement of a trademark in federal court. The Court in Winestore held…
Most opposition proceedings in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the USPTO settle before final judgment, often based on a negotiated settlement agreement requiring the abandonment of the opposed application. In these circumstances, will judgment be entered against the applicant and in favor of…
Earlier this summer, in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, the federal district court for the Southern District of New York held that Andy Warhol’s artwork series depicting the late singer Prince was protectable fair use of a photograph taken by…
When a judicial opinion refers to a “bitter feud”, a plaintiff “beset by acrimony”, and a “rock star” banker who “faced his peripeteia” (we looked it up for you –it’s Greek for “reversal of fortune”), you know there’s gotta be a good story behind a…
Many practitioners take for granted the fact that any TTAB deadlines that fall on a Saturday, Sunday or Federal holiday are automatically extended to the following business day. As it turns out, this isn’t always the case. A recent decision on a Petition to the…
It’s been an annual tradition here at The TMCA to write about a trademark and copyright dispute between Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. and My Other Bag, Inc. (“MOB”) over a line of canvas tote bags that parodied Louis Vuitton’s iconic designer handbags. We wrote about…
Comparative advertising can be an effective marketing tool to tout product benefits vs. competitors, but consumers shouldn’t need to read confusing fine print disclaimers and whip out their calculators to understand the ad claims. This was the lesson of a recent decision involving competitive drinkable…
On May 31, 2017, President Trump tweeted a half-formed message with a mystifying final word: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe”. The Twitterverse and other social media platforms went wild with re-tweets, memes and assorted guesses about what “covfefe” meant or what actual word or…
Jeffrey CadwellJeff advises clients on the availability, registrability, and stre...
Michael KeyesJ. Michael Keyes is an intellectual property attorney with exten...
Kaleb McNeelyAs a partner in the Trial Group, Kaleb practices primarily in the ...
Sarah RobertsonSarah has over fifteen years’ experience helping clients prot...
Fara SunderjiFara assists clients in the development and execution of all type...
Charlene KroghCharlene Krogh is a Partner in Dorsey’s top-ranked Tradem...
Evan EveristEvan is a partner in Dorsey’s Trademark, Copyright and Adverti...