Why obey federal trademark law (aka the Lanham Act) when you can just pass a new law that exempts you from it? Montana’s Senators sure are slick and I’m betting the Last Best Beef wishes it had a beef with any other State besides Montana! Instead of federally registering and enforcing its rights in Montana’s…

As noted in the first piece of this two-part series, the Stop Online Piracy Act’s (“SOPA”) procedures vary depending on whether the Attorney General or a copyright holder initiates the process. This article looks at the possible course of action when initiated by the Attorney General. SOPA permits the U.S. Attorney General to take action against “foreign…

Currently under debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) would provide the Attorney General and copyright holders with tools to combat copyright infringement and trafficking of counterfeit goods. Whether the bill goes too far, though, is under heavy scrutiny. Opponents to SOPA, including Internet giants such as Google and…

Do you imagine crow tastes good with chicken?  Maybe we should ask the legal eagles representing Chick-fil-A, whom I suspect now have first-hand knowledge of the answer to that question. A week ago today, I posted a link on Brand Geek’s Facebook page (Like it, please!) to a blog post on Blurtabout Chick-fil-A’s apparent bullying of Robert (“Bo”) Muller-Moore…

The ongoing  “patent war” between Google, Apple and Microsoft has brought public attention to the value that these companies perceive in their patent holdings. These companies are aggressively buying patents, hoping to integrate those discoveries with their own, but also to preclude their use by competitors through the threat of patent-infringement litigation. Software patents, are…

CA Water District’s new domain names unfairly drown out Central Basin Municipal Water District.            It’s no mystery that California is experiencing a water crisis.  Apparently the crisis has grown so bad that one public agency resorted to diverting internet traffic away from another.  The Central Basin Municipal Water District (CBMWD) issued a press release on September 29, 2011 stating that…

On October 5, 2011 Steve Jobs died and the world lost a great man. In honor, one of my tech friends, Eric Greenspan of Make It Work, posted the above image to his Facebook page yesterday afternoon, which I immediately “Liked.”  (Eric also took part in a moving HuffPost Tribute to Steve Jobs, which can be seen here).  Let me correct myself; I immediately loved this image. …

          Apple is known for innovation.  Above on the left is Apple’s revolutionary touch-screen device.  Above on the right is a portion of the patent for this device.  Apple’s introduced the iPhone on January 9, 2007 (has it only been five years?).  On the very same day, it filed a federal trademark registration application for MULTI-TOUCH. …

I’m a patent attorney. As a result, I get a lot of questions from people about patents. Questions like: “Do you think this idea is patentable?”; “Do I need to hire an attorney?”; or “How much will it cost to file a patent?” I’ve always enjoyed interacting with inventors. They are often very excited about…

Google is one of the worlds most intriguing companies.  From its humble beginnings as a search engine company, Google has leveraged its mastery of the elusive formula for monetizing web traffic into a force capable of tangling with China—making it considerably stronger than our own State Department by some measures.  Its recent announcement that it plans to acquire Motorola Mobile makes…