By David Posteraro The Supreme Court this past week agreed to hear two trademark cases next term. In Lucky Brand Dungarees, Inc. v. Marcel Fashions Group, Inc., the Court will decide “whether, when a plaintiff asserts new claims, federal preclusion principles can bar...
By: Kyle Hutnick and David Posteraro The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down a provision of the federal trademark statute that prohibited the registration of “immoral” or “scandalous” trademarks for violating the First Amendment. The case is Iancu v. Brunetti and...
By David Posteraro “Nothing succeeds like address.” - Fran Lebowitz “There is no there there.” - Gertrude Stein, “Everybody’s Autobiography” Building a brand, creating brand acceptance, and engendering brand loyalty takes time, talent, effort and expense. In an...
A recent federal court decision serves as another reminder to manufactures and brands of the importance and benefits of reseller and distribution agreements. These types of agreements govern the relationship between a manufacturer of goods and the reseller of those...
By David Posteraro "Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style – but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the “off”, of things-being-what-they-are not." - Susan Sontag, Notes on ‘Camp’ In the United States, brand owners acquire common...
You’ve spent years perfecting your products, cultivating trusted suppliers overseas, and establishing your supply chain. You’ve invested thoughtfully in marketing and taken steps to build your brand in the global, e-commerce marketplace. Perhaps you have even...
[UPDATED: August 4, 2021. Originally written by David Posteraro.] In 1961, worried that critics would savage his musical, ”Subways Are for Sleeping,” Broadway producer David Merrick turned to the phone book to find men with the same names as the daily newspaper...
By David Posteraro Ohio-based International Watchman, Inc. sued Watching Time, LLC and others for infringement of its federally registered “NATO” mark. The federal district court in Cleveland held that Watching Time’s cancellation proceeding against the NATO mark was...
We live in a global economy, and companies operate in international marketplaces. As such, brands need to be aware of and monitor the increasing prevalence of gray market goods. Gray market goods – sometimes referred to as parallel imports – are genuine goods...
By David Posteraro Our earlier post, “Trade Secrets in Business Transactions,” focused on the role of lawyers, accountants and businesses in evaluating a target company’s valuable trade secrets. But generally, companies often underestimate both the significance of...