Alt Legal IP News – Issue #143
Justin Wickersham | June 18, 2019
Bad Actors
– Streaming company Twitch is finally cracking down on users who stream illegal, explicit, and copyrightable content.
– A trademark attorney is facing a malpractice suit after switching sides and challenging a trademark he helped get registered.
– A lawyer has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for uploading pornographic videos to the internet and then threatening to sue anyone for copyright infringement against anyone who downloaded them.
David v. Goliath
– Construction company Caterpillar, Inc. has filed a petition of cancellation against a small coffee shop in Santa Cruz for using the word “Cat” on their apparel.
– A small satellite startup company sued Lockheed Martin for patent infringement.
– A local taco restaurant in Des Moines, has sued the well known food manufacturing company More Than Gourmet for using their “Tasty Tacos” trademark.
To Infinity and Beyond
– The race is on to see who can receive more patents on drone delivery systems, and so far Wal-Mart is beating out Amazon.
– For a $400 million price tag, you can purchase the world’s largest airplane, its facilities, and its related intellectual property.
– The city of Roswell, New Mexico received state trademark protection for their new alien-inspired logo.
Odds and Ends
– Genius, a website known for collecting song lyrics, used morse code to discover that Google was blatantly copying lyrics from their website.
– The most recognizable scents of perfume will never be able to receive trademark protection.
– A recently published study claims that countries with longer copyright terms have access to fewer books.
– More and more scientists are citing patents in their research; however, these patents are for things that don’t even exist yet.