Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Here are several items that I have been holding to fit into posts, but that do not warrant a separate post:

• The list of regional IP blogs keeps growing.  Here are a few recent additions, as well as some general IP blogs.  I will do an update of my regional blog list soon:
  
  
  • Delaware Patent Litigation Report* by lawyers at Morris James.  This is not technically a new blog, but it is a significant redesign and a blog you should be reading if you practice patent law in the District of Delaware.
     
  • ITC 337 Law Blog by lawyers at Oblon Spivak.  This is not a regional blog, but it is at least a niche IP blog and it covers a venue that has been a glaring omission in the legal blog world;
     
  • Patent Law Insights* by Rajiv Sarathy of Perkins Coie.  Again not a regional blog, but Sarathy is putting up good content and his posting appears to be getting more frequent.
     
  • Virginia IP Law* by lawyers at Troutman Sanders.  This is a true regional IP blog, and it looks like a great addition to the club.
     
• At his IP Think Tank blog, Duncan Bucknell explains when you would not want to register your trademarks -- click here to read the post.  Bucknell makes good points, but it is also worth the read just to see a lawyer advocate against legal protection in a written document, that is not something you will see often.
   
• Blawg Review #212 (click here to read it) is up at Current Trends in Copyright, Trademark & Entertainment Law.  It is written around the country song “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” a/k/a “You Don’t Have To Call Me Darlin,’ Darlin’” (click to watch the video).  In honor of INTA being held this week in Seattle, there is a lot of IP-related content.

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Managing Intellectual Property published its annual list of the fifty most powerful people in the international IP community (hat tip to Patent Docs for pointing it out).  Click here for the list (subscription or two week free trial sign up required).  There were two honorees with Chicago connections:

• Rhonda Steele (#8) -- Steele is both the president of INTA and Asia-Pacific marketing properties manager for Mars.  While Steele does not necessarily work in Chicago or on Chicago-specific IP, Mars makes Fun Size versions of its 3 Musketeers, Snickers and Milky Way candy bars in Chicago.
  
• Jim Malackowski (#34) -- Malackowski is a founder of Chicago-based Ocean Tomo, as well as its president and CEO.  Among other things, Ocean Tomo is well known for its patent auctions (at leas the last several of which have each totalled more than $10M in sales), IP valuation services and damages expert work.

These IP luminaries share the honor with Second Life avatars (#1), the PTO's Director John Dudas (#4), the Federal Circuit's Judge Michel (#9), Harry Potter (#14),and  blogger and Google copyright counsel William Patry, of the Patry Copyright Blog.

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The Chicago Tribune ran a story on the front page of Wednesday's Business section about the use of trademarks in keyword internet advertising:  Trademark Battlefield.  The story discussed various efforts to stop internet search engines (like those offered by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) from selling trademarked terms as search keywords.  For example, the story suggested that State Farm, an insurance company, may have purchased the name of its chief competitor, Allstate, from Google.  As a result, if you google "Allstate" Allstate's websites will come up first in the search results, but in the upper right corner of the search results page, you will see a State Farm ad. 

The story also discussed comments from a Google trademark lawyer, Rose Hagan, during a standing-room-only panel at the International Trademark Association's ("INTA") meeting on Monday, which was held in Chicago.  Hagan said that Google sells advertising space, not trademarks.  The story also notes that Utah has passed a law which prohibited the use of a competitor's trademarks as advertising keywords.  For more on the Utah law, check out Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog (via Marty Schwimmer's Trademark Blog).  The Utah law and the various lawsuits against Google, Yahoo and Microsoft on this issue are all evidence that this is a very unsettled area of trademark law.  A Yahoo attorney, Laura Hauck Covington, explained that "[w]e're all trying to find the right, reasonable balance for the owners of trademarks, consumers and advertisers."

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