Tuesday, May 31, 2011

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.

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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:

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.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Amelia said...

"People for years have been using app' as a shortened form for the word 'application."'This is very very true. When it comes to entertainment law, or even business law, there's something companies need to understand. They ARE NOT above the law. No one is, and if someone is, then that's not okay and we need to do something about that quick.

10:54 AM  

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