Eva Gabrielsson, the girlfriend of the late Stieg Larsson (author of the popular Dragon Tattoo books) has just completed a memoir on her life with the author.  I was struck by the cover design of her book, at least the version to be released in the U.S.  It seems highly reminiscent of the cover designs [...]

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We have a theme this week:  Cities and their images.  For earlier posts, see this (San Francisco and Los Angeles), and this (Pittsburgh today), and this (Dallas and Austin).
Let’s add Boston.
As a handful of you know, the Boston Bruins ice hockey team has been competing in the National Hockey League playoffs this Spring.  (As I write, [...]

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Down in Baltimore (or depending on your locale, up in Baltimore, over in Baltimore, or out in Baltimore), there is a tempest brewing over the word “Hon” — as in, “Can I warm that up for you, hon?”
The term has long been a part of Baltimore’s collective culture, so much so that the city is [...]

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A ton of virtual ink has been spilled in recent days over the IP issues surrounding tattoos, Mike Tyson, plastic surgery, and body modification.   Just in the legal academic blogosphere, see here,  here, and of course here.  Perhaps it is time for a different minor topic.
Out in Colorado, the nose of Hall of Fame [...]

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I’ve often wondered whether it is technically correct to refer to intellectual property infringement as a species of tort law.  We tend not to equate torts with IP in common parlance, but there are certainly similarities, notably with property-based torts like trespass and conversion.  Maybe we don’t use the tort terminology because it runs up [...]

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I was reading in Entertainment Weekly (yes, even IP profs have some downtime) about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s forthcoming comic book and cartoon series that he is working on with Stan Lee entitled “The Governator”.  Apparently, he thought the title was so cool when he first took office that he registered it as a TM with the [...]

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Note the deposition transcript excerpted here, in which the witness appears unable to understand the question, “Do you have a photocopier in your office?”  Many questions, answers, and objections later, a clearer picture emerges.
The exchange also reminds me of a new favorite blog of mine, Letters of Note.  Someday, its contents are likely to elicit [...]

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In an age where many argue that trademarks are getting over enforced, I thought this post was a nice reminder of why we have trademarks in the first place and what can happen when the underlying quality fades:
Six Brands that Don’t Mean What They Used To

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Two years ago, with the Pittsburgh Steelers on the cusp of winning their sixth Super Bowl title, I mused in this blog post about the validity of trademark registrations in the iconic Terrible Towel.  My takeaway:  There are substantial reasons to doubt the marks’ validity, even if it is extremely unlikely that anyone would raise a [...]

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Pittsburgh is all over the news this week because the Pittsburgh Steelers will play the Green Bay Packers next Sunday in the Super Bowl.  But in the IP world, two other Pittsburgh icons are about to face off.  And neither of them is Girl Talk.
In this corner:  Emerging Pittsburgh-based rap star Wiz Khalifa.  Check out the [...]

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With thanks to Jim Gibson for initiating a thought-provoking discussion on cyberprof about this issue, apparently Google has just caught out rival search engine Bing in a sting operation for copying Google’s search results (by inserting fake search results in the manner of the Feist case and determining that Bing was copying the fake results).  [...]

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I just saw this image on amazon.com which immediately brought to mind Raiders of the Lost Ark and, to some extent, Romancing the Stone. Anyone think there could be potential problems here with copyright or trademark?

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So in my continuing quest to complete the Harry Potter series of books before watching the new movie, I’m plugging through Book 7 now.  I started wondering, though, what would happen if a real high school decided to name its houses after those in Harry Potter ie Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin?  Would there be [...]

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With a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of those in IP and cyberlaw circles who have helped me along the way with this project, I wanted to let you know that my book Internet Domain Names, Trademarks, and Free Speech has come out this week in hard copy and eBook formats.  Publisher website details [...]

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While wandering through the “young teen” fiction section of a local bookstore recently, I noticed a series of supernatural fiction books by author Rachel Hawthorne in the same section as the Stephenie Meyer Twilight books (yes, I had to mention Twilight again sometime, didn’t I?)  While I haven’t read any of Hawthorne’s books, her Dark [...]

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The NYTimes offers this excellent account of an exhibit that opened recently at a gallery at Carnegie Mellon University:  “Whatever It Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals, and Obsessions.”
It’s an assembly of unlicensed black-and-gold artifacts that express and embody the passionate relationship between Pittsburghers worldwide and the Steelers’ NFL franchise.  The curator of the exhibit noted that [...]

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According to Yahoo Sports, Florida State University has decided it wants to be the only Seminoles. FSU has apparently sent a demand letter to a high school 50years after learning that the school calls its teams the Seminoles.

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The semester starts tomorrow morning, and I am teaching Trademark Law this Fall.  Happily for me, the NYTimes Magazine published this engaging review of the counterfeit sneaker industry in Putian, in China.   The piece features this wonderful quote:
As one Chinese salesman selling counterfeits in Beijing told me: ‘The shoes are original. It’s just the brands [...]

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I recently noticed some publicity about a court case in Italy involving a clothing line using the trademark “GC by George Clooney” which has no affiliation with the popular actor George Clooney.  Looking at this online write up of the dispute (source here), it strikes me that one could construct a neat exam hypothetical in [...]

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The NYTimes reports that knockoffs are going down market:
After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton handbags, criminals are discovering there is money to be made in faking the more ordinary — like $295 Kooba bags and $140 Ugg boots. In California, the authorities recently seized a shipment of counterfeit Angel Soft [...]

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