Copyright & Trademark News

Posted on March 19, 2009 by R. David Donoghue

I have noticed that my news updates tend to be patent-focused, so today  they focus on trademarks and copyrights:

  • IP Law & Business (subscription required to access the article) has an interesting article in the February/March 2009 issue identifying Justice Ginsburg as the Supreme Court's "champion of copyright holders" because of recent opinions supporting broader copyrights.  The article also identifies Justice Breyer, based on dissents in the same cases, as leading the cause for narrower copyrights.  And the article predicts that the Supreme Court is trending toward a narrower view of copyrights.
     
  • Seattle Trademark Lawyer Michael Atkins has a timely post (click here to read it) that traces the March Madness trademark back to the Illinois high school basketball playoffs, as early as the 1940s.  The NCAA and the Illinois High School Association have since pooled their rights and both have a license to use the marks. 
     
  • Victoria Pynchon has a great series of posts looking at laches in trademark law based upon a recent Ninth Circuit decision -- click here and here.

 

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Weekend of Trademarks in the Tribune

Posted on February 19, 2007 by R. David Donoghue
Over the weekend the Tribune ran two articles on trademark suits.  The first on Friday - 'March Madness' Use Approved - reported on a trademark suit in Cook County Circuit Court between Intersport, a Chicago-based sports media company, and the NCAA.  Intersport brought the action for, it appears, declaratory judgment that Intersport's license with the NCAA allowed it to use the NCAA's March Madness mark in connection with college-basketball related programming on wireless devices.  Circuit Judge Palmer held that Intersport could use the mark for distributing content "in any manner, including but not limited to distribution to video-enabled mobile wireless media devices."  The Tribune reports that Cingular Wireless, one of the NCAA's sponsors, offered wireless scores and highlights last year.  Last year, Intersport produced basketball-related wireless content for Sprint, but was barred from using the March Madness mark.  This year, it appears they will be free to use the mark.

The second Tribune story - Tribune Wants Fox `Red Eye' Title Closed by Phil Rosenthal - is about the federal trademark suit the Tribune filed last week against Fox.  The Tribune claims that Fox's new "Red Eye" news program violates the Tribune's federal trademark for its RedEye newspaper.  The Tribune's complaint argues that consumers were led to believe that the Tribune and Fox are collaborating on Fox's Red Eye program.  We will likely see more of this case on the Blog as opinions start to be issued.

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