During the 2016 presidential primaries, then presidential candidates Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio exchanged insults, with Trump calling Rubio “Little Marco” and Rubio commenting on the size of Trumps hands. Recently, this exchange was the basis for a Federal Circuit decision reversing a refusal…
Attention trademark practitioners: the finalized rules implementing the 2020 Trademark Modernization Act (“TMA”) go into effect this weekend, on December 18, 2021. Significantly, this marks the availability of three new mechanisms for eliminating “deadwood” registrations: petitions for reexamination, petitions for expungement, and a new nonuse…
Twelve years after the Federal Circuit’s landmark In re Bose decision on fraud, the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) has answered one of the questions not reached by Bose: whether reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of a material statement in a…
As we wrote in Parts I and II in this series, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) was signed into law on December 27, 2020, containing several significant amendments to the Lanham Act. This post will cover two of the legislative changes: (1) the…
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…
After a fair amount of end-of-year legislative drama, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) was signed into law on December 27, 2020 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021, which also included needed funding for COVID-19 relief and support. The text of…
In a precedential decision earlier this year, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board thinned some of the haze surrounding the registrability of trademarks for hemp-derived CBD products. In line with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office guidelines issued last year, the Board confirmed that marks…
On April 8, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision on an appeal from the refusal of registration of a color trademark by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. In this case, the applicant, Forney Industries, Inc., a maker of…
In 2005, Christian Faith Fellowship Church, a Chicago-based church group, filed two trademark applications for the mark ADD A ZERO for use on clothing, including shirts and caps that they later sold to raise money for charity. One application was for a standard…
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…
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...