It's a Crazy Intellectual Property World

It's a Crazy Intellectual Property World From Apple trying to register a trademark of "App Store" to Apple suing someone for selling white iPhone kits, to CBS being the subject of a lawsuit for copyright infringement; it is a crazy intellectual property world. Do not wade through the waters of intellectual property alone - let's go through some of the difficult stories. Apple's "Appstore" Trademark I do not believe that Apple will be able to either register "Appstore" or "App Store" as a trademark or successfully win its lawsuit for trademark infringement against Amazon.com. This is because many people for years have been using "app" as a shortened form for the word "application." To me, "app" is a generic term and "store" is a generic term used for "a store in which one buys applications." As the story says, "the threshold that businesses must cross in order to avoid being deemed to use a generic term" will be decided in these cases. " CBS and CNET are sued A coalition of artists have sued CBS and CNET for wilfully facilitating copyright infringement. According to the suit, CBS and CNET received advertising revenue when users of the Limewire peer-to-peer downloading system downloaded unauthorized copies of work. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384913,00.asp Do not forget my speaking engagement: I will be speaking on June 2, 2011 at 6:00 PM to the Executives Club of New Jersey. The topic is Trademark, Copyright and Advertising Law Thoughts for Small-to-Medium Business. It will be jam-packed with thoughts and ideas. Please come. RSVP by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/mN4Nd6

Apple II Apple has filed suit against a small company run by a teen that sells conversion kits to make your iPhone 4 white. To me, it seems more of an issue of trade dress than trademark infringement, though the website's name does use iPhone.