By Eric M. Gayan, Partner, Patent Attorney, Standley Law Group LLP
Clients often ask whether domain names can serve as trademarks. That is, for example, can .com, .net, or some other top-level domain (TLD) in conjunction with another term(s) be trademarked? While the answer has in the past been based almost exclusively on the term(s) with which the TLD is combined, that has recently changed – at least in certain circumstances.
By Beverly A. Marsh, Partner, Patent Attorney, Standley Law Group LLP
Clients often want to know how they can best protect their software. The answer usually lies in a combination of different forms of intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Whereas patents protect inventions (how it works, what it does) and trademarks protect brands, copyrights protect original works of authorship. Works of authorship, often referred to as just “works”, are forms of expression and by definition do not include any ideas, processes, concepts that underly those works. For example, in the art world an idea might be a bowl of peaches on a table, and a work of authorship an artist’s painting of the bowl of peaches. In the software world an idea might be a phone app that displays the weather. A related work of authorship is how a developer creates their version of an app that displays the weather, including their original source code, design layouts, textual content, images, and graphics.
By Eric M. Gayan, Partner, Standley Law Group LLP
Perhaps “trademark squatting” is not yet a commonly used term in trademark law, as is “cybersquatting” in the realm of domain name registrations. But maybe it should be. Because some trademark applicants have substantially the same unscrupulous goals as a cybersquatter – to obtain a registration solely for the purpose of holding it ransom to others.
This article addresses difficulties that can be created by such activities, various protections of U.S. trademark law that are supposed to guard against such activities, and some related considerations for potential trademark applicants.
By DeAnna Barnett, Litigation Paralegal Manager, Standley Law Group LLP, And
F. Michael Speed, Jr., Ph.D., Partner, Standley Law Group LLP
The Court’s local rules and local patent rules are as important to civil litigants as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure themselves because they address particularities that are not addressed in the Federal Rules. Each United States District Court has its own set of local rules. These rules are generally available on a court’s website. One such example is that of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio available at: https://www.ohsd.uscourts.gov/sites/ohsd/files//Local%20Rules%20Effective%202020-08-01.pdf
By Ken W. Pung, Associate Attorney, Standley Law Group LLP
2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 21704; 2020 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 10775
Opinion by: Circuit Judge Alan Lourie
U.S. Patent Nos.: 7,595,048, 8,168,179, 8,728,474, 9,067,999, 9,073,994, and 9,402,899.
The facts of this case concern an inventorship dispute over methods of treating cancer by administering antibodies targeting PD-1 (receptor) and PD-L1 (ligand) interactions on T cells (a type of lymphocyte that develops in the thymus gland). The three scientists involved in this inventorship dispute are: Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Honjo (of Ono Pharm., herein “Ono”), Dr. Wood (of the Genetics Institute, now owned by Pfizer), and Dr. Freeman (of Dana-Farber).
