Posts — News & Updates – Page 2

October 17, 2017November 29, 2017

Surf’s Up! — Surf School Trademark War Ends Badly For The Bully

Here’s another one to file under the maxim “use it or lose it,” from a recent decision in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) that is also an example of how people with inflated importance often fail to pay attention to the finer details, to their detriment.

Surfing is a competitive sport and that spirit of rivalry extends to businesses teaching the sport of surfing. In this instance, a late comer to the surfing school business in Santa Cruz, California, decided to threaten an established competitor with trademark infringement.

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September 19, 2017December 6, 2017

Dark Web Drug Dealer’s Trademark Application Gets Him Nailed

The subject of this article could be filed in the category of “dumb criminals.” And here’s why.

In 2015, David Ryan Buchard of Merced, California, was already under investigation by the US Postal Inspector and a special agent for Homeland Security Investigation (“HSI”) for suspicion of drug dealing. They believed that Buchard was doing his transactions on a dark web drug marketplace known as The Silk Road. They were trying to track Buchard’s Bitcoin transactions on The Silk Road. Bitcoin is a form of digital money technically known as “crypto-currency,” as opposed to “fiat-currency” (i.e., money created and regulated by governments). Crypto-currencies, including Bitcoin, are legal for private transactions, but are very often used by drug traffickers because the users’ real identities are cloaked by pseudonyms.

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September 12, 2017December 6, 2017

Is Your Brand Generic? — When Grilled Meat Means Just Grilled Meat

Too often businesses, in conceiving their brand names and the marks/logos that represent their brands, adopt really weak marks that can have disastrous consequences. In the case at hand, a restaurant chain adopted as its service mark a Spanish/Portuguese word that literally means “grilled meat” in English. As it turned out, it seems that “grilled meat” means nothing more than “grilled meat” rather than a brand name for the restaurant’s services.

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August 22, 2017December 6, 2017

The Era of Fake — Solicitations from Fake “Official” Trademark Offices

At least once a month, clients send me urgent messages that they received notices that appear to be official government correspondence about their trademark applications or trademark registrations. Typically, these notices (sometimes even in the form of an invoice) demand the payment of various fees to insure their trademarks are in compliance. However, on a quick review of these notices, it becomes immediately apparent they are all bogus. In the last several years there has been a growing cottage industry of private companies trolling for customers by using misleading trademark “notices.” They often charge fees for services that are not necessary or are often inflated from the official government fees. The problem has become so pervasive that the actual U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) held a public seminar last month on the matter and devotes a page to it on the actual, official USPTO website to educate the public.

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March 7, 2017December 1, 2017

Forming a Business with Others — Be Afraid, Be Very Very Afraid

Forming a Business with Others — Be Afraid, Be Very Very Afraid

Okay, so the quote from the Gina Davis character in the remake of the SciFi classic The Fly may be over the top. But when forming a business venture with others, a person should keep a healthy but critical eye out for the possibility of being screwed by one’s partners. To help prevent such a possibility, a key element in any business formation and for the ongoing relationship of its

members is having an operating agreement (if the company is an LLC) or a shareholders’ agreement (if it is a corporation). However, too often new businesses put such important legal concerns on the back burner until … well, until the pot and its contents get burned. A recent New York appeals court decision has now highlighted how devastating such dilatoriness can be.

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