Alt Legal IP News – Issue #9
Hannah Samendinger | October 18, 2016
You can now subscribe to our podcast, Alt Trademarks, on iTunes. Check out the second episode featuring IP attorney Cliff Kuehn. We discuss his time at the OHIM (now the EUIPO) as well as unauthorized trademark filers.
The Modern Age
– A Federal Court has authorized service of process by Twitter.
– An analysis of Uber’s 38 patents, with another 53 pending.
– Trademark applications for hashtags are on the rise. In 2015, over 1,300 of those applications were filed.
– One law professor believes that AI software should be able to register its own patents.
Intellectual Property: Celebrity Edition
– Jared Leto attempted to block publication of a leaked video by TMZ by retroactively claiming copyright ownership. A California court didn’t buy it.
– Kanye West was sued by a NY man over the use of the word “Loisaidas” (Spanish slang for “lower east siders”) in a short film. The court dismissed the complaint on First Amendment ground.
– Turn it up to… $125 million. Harry Shearer (voice of 23 Simpsons characters) is suing foraccounting claims and copyright termination over the film Spinal Tap.
Super Fans
– LucasFilms is striking back against a lightsaber academy for using a confusingly similar logo.
– David Kluft prepared an excellent review of important copyright cases for anyone getting into fan fiction.
– 2001: A Space Odyssey is a critically acclaimed movie. One tech giant may be aparticularly big fan, once even having the movie cited against the company’s patent application as an example of prior art.
Odds and Ends
– Can you patent a magic trick?
– The City of Atlanta is threatening legal action against a satirical Facebook account that has been providing updates such as, “We have invested 90 million dollars in a trolley system that will allow citizens to travel 10 whole blocks in a total of 3 hours.”
– The USPTO is soliciting comments and hosting roundtables on patent subject matter eligibility. The deadline to register to speak at the roundtable is October 26.
– In case you missed it, we recently hosted a webinar on Canadian IP law with John Lee, a Canadian practitioner. Catch up on everything you need to know about TM protection north of the border with the webinar and the slides.