Weekly IP Buzz for week ending January 12, 2018
New Trademark Procedures at USPTO; Common IP Scams; Athletic Shoes and Patent Infringement
Here's a summary of interesting developments in intellectual property, technology, social media, and Internet law for the week ending January 12, 2018.
New Trademark Procedures at USPTO
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has changed the way that applicants and brand owners may revive abandoned, expired, or cancelled trademark applications and registrations. These new trademark procedures provide more precise timing for petitions to revive. Before the recent revisions to the U.S. Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (“TMEP”), trademark applicants and owners had to follow rather nebulous guidelines if they sought to revive an abandoned, expired, or cancelled trademark application or registration. More
Protect Your Business From These Common IP Scams
Small brand owners and self-proprietors are often the target of intellectual property scams that are intended to elicit quick cash from innocent owners. For instance, a recent story from Nebraska details how a small coffee shop was targeted by these scammers. In Nebraska, the scammers sent an official-looking letter to the local coffee shop advising the owners of Muglife Coffee to register their trademark and brand on “international trademark registries” to potentially avoid losing rights to their mark. The letter asked the coffee shop owner to pay over $2,500 each time to “register” the trademark. More
Shoe Wars – Taking the Battle to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board
Patent infringement lawsuits related to athletic shoes are not new. Athletic shoe companies regularly sue each other for patent infringement and challenge the validity of each other’s patents, typically in the federal courts. Now, athletic shoe companies including Nike, Adidas, and Skechers have taken the patent invalidity battle to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which is part of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), challenging each other’s patents in proceedings known as inter partes review. More
In addition to Thriving Attorney, Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. He also co-founded Project K, a charity devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time. Click to read more about Darin Klemchuk's practice as an intellectual property lawyer.
