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

Here are several items that did not necessarily warrant a separate post, but are worth some attention:

• Chicago blogger Evan Brown of Internet Cases recently participated in episode 16 of the This Week in the Law podcast with law blog luminaries Denise Howell (the host), Nicole Black, Marty Schwimmer and Ernie Svenson -- click here for Brown's post and a link to the podcast. Their lively discussion included numerous IP topics including: 
  • DMCA anticircumvention provisions;
  • ediscovery; and
  • the Viacom v. Google discovery issues (the parties ultimately agreed that the compelled user data could be produced anonymously).
    
• Mike Atkins did a great series of post comparing the benefits of state and federal trademark registration -- click here and here for the posts.  These posts are a great primer, if you want to understand the differences between and trade offs for state versus federal registration.
  
• The John Marshall Law School has been included in the PTO's new Law School Clinic Program.  Beginning this fall, second and third year John Marshall students will represent inventors in actual PTO proceedings.  This is a great opportunity for both the students and the inventors.  Click here for John Marshall's press release about the new program.

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Mike Atkins at the Seattle Trademark Lawyer has an interesting post -- click here for the post -- about a pending Chinese trademark infringement suit, in which plaintiff seeks monetary damages and a public apology to be published in newspapers.  IP Dragon follows up Atkins's post, explaining that an apology is a Chinese trademark remedy and that an apology is a punishment in a "face saving culture," as IP Dragon describes China and Japan, the nationalities of the two entities involved in the suit.  Click here for IP Dragon's post.

But punishment or not, this raises an interesting question for US trademark law.  It seems to me that a public apology (or acknowledgement of the infringement) would be a more powerful tool for the consumers that trademark law intends to protect than just monetary damages and an injunction.  An acknowledgement of the infringement would warn consumers who might still unwittingly purchase items based upon the infringing marks after the injunction is in place.  Maybe it is time to amend the Lanham Act.

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The Northern District had 72 trademark cases filed during the first half of 2008.  That is well on the way to meeting or exceeding 2007's total of 138 cases -- click here to read about the 2007 case filings.  So, it looks like, as with patents, the Northern District continues to have an active trademark infringement docket.  A difficult economy is not slowing the Northern District's IP cases.

Thanks to Mike Atkins at the Seattle Trademark Lawyer for the idea of a mid-year status report.  Expect a similar copyright mid-year report shortly.

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A recent post complimenting The Blog by Mike Atkins at the Seattle Trademark Lawyer Blog (thanks Mike) jump started a post I had been planning for a while.  There are a growing number of blogs following IP issues in different regions of the country (and world), what Mike refers to as our "cousin" blogs.  So, here a list of the regional IP blogs that I know about.  All of them offer interesting content, much of  which is useful beyond their home regions:

If you know of other regional IP blogs, post a comment or send me an email (dave.donoghue@yahoo.com) and I will add them to the list.

*The Florida IP Blog is another blog developed and hosted by LexBlog just like this Blog and, as usual, it is a great looking site with easy navigation.

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