Author: Sarah Robertson

Sarah has over fifteen years’ experience helping clients protect, enforce and exploit their intellectual property assets and overseeing clients’ general business needs, with particular depth in the creative industries, tech, financial and consumer product sectors.

Bot or not? The Rise of CGI Influencers

In the not too distant past, consumer product brands hired celebrity figures to act as their official ambassadors. These celebrities appeared in traditional media such as TV commercials and celebrity interviews in print publications, as well as online. Jamie Lee Curtis spooning up Dannon Activia…

Large Number of Works Set to Enter the Public Domain in 2019

An interesting article by The Atlantic highlights the large number of classic works that are set to enter the public domain on January 1, 2019.  Hundreds of thousands of works, including old classics such as Noël Coward’s London Calling! musical and Charlie Chaplin’s film The Pilgrim,…

Cannabis Shirt Battle Costs Iowa State Almost $1M

We previously posted about a four year legal battle that arose from a refusal by Iowa State University to let its school logos be used on t-shirts by an on-campus pro-cannabis group, and the free speech implications of this refusal. In that case, ISU was…

Cannabis Branding and Free Speech Considerations

A recent out-of-court settlement following an 8th Circuit decision in Gerlich v. Leath highlights some of the unique legal issues that surround the branding of products in the cannabis space. In 2012, two students at Iowa State University (ISU), Paul Gerlich and Erin Furleigh, secured…