| Color as Trademark Subject Matter |
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| Under the Lanham Act "any word, name, symbol or device" may be eligible for trademark registration. Courts have differed as to whether or not the law recognizes the use of color alone as a trademark because the Lanham Act does not specifically mention color. For many years the general rule had been that color would not be given trademark significance because of the limited number of colors available, unless the color was employed as an element of a distinctive design. More... |
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| Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 |
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| The moral rights of authors that are recognized in the Berne Convention are: (1) the right of attribution, which is the right to be identified as the author of a work or to be disassociated from a work such as by publishing a work anonymously or under a pseudonym; and (2) the right of integrity, which allows an author to prevent distortion or mutilation of the work. Additional moral rights granted by French law include the right to decide whether the work may be disclosed to the public, the right to withdraw a disclosed work from the public, and the right to reply to criticism of the work in the same medium in which the criticism was presented. Moral rights exist independently of any property rights in the copyrighted work and are kept by the author even if the copyrighted work is sold or transferred. Outside the United States, if another person owns the property right to a copyrighted work, the exercise of moral rights--such as ordering the publishing of a book to cease--may require the author to compensate the owner of the property right for any economic loss that results. In many jurisdictions, moral rights may be waived. More... |
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| Patent Law: Written Description |
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| Under the Patent Act's application requirements, the manner and process of making and using the invention to be patented must be described in sufficiently full, clear, concise, and exact terms to enable a person of ordinary skill in the field in which the invention is classified (the "art") to make and use the invention. This requirement ensures that the invention is described and communicated to the public in a meaningful way so that the invention contributes to public knowledge; accordingly, a patent claim may be ruled invalid if it is not supported by an enabling description. More... |
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| Fragrances as Trademark Subject Matter |
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| Distinctive fragrances are eligible for federal trademark registration. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, in a landmark decision, reversed the Examining Attorney and held that there was no reason why a fragrance was not capable of identifying and distinguishing certain types of products. Thus, the Board allowed registration of an arbitrary, nonfunctional scent for sewing thread and embroidery yarn. More... |
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| Trademark Fair Use |
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| A party is entitled to use a trademark in such as way as to describe the qualities that a mark represents as long as the manner of use of the mark is not as a trademark but only used in a descriptive sense. Fair use of a trademark occurs when a defendant uses a descriptive trademark of another party to describe the defendant's own product. This is the fair use defense set forth in the Lanham Act that provides: More... |
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