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Many trademark practitioners have noted the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s recent penchant for issuing refusals to register trademarks on the ground of failure to function as a trademark. In a recent precedential decision from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, In re Brunetti, 2022 U.S.P.Q.2d 764 (TTAB Aug 22, 2022), the Board provided some initial guidance on how it will evaluate failure-to-function refusals going forward. Whether or not by design, the Board could not have chosen a more colorful case to designate as precedential. Brunetti involved an applicant, who was a well-known protagonist of the Office (Erik Brunetti), and his efforts to register the mark FUCK for a wide variety of goods and services. Because Brunetti failed to overcome the Office’s prima facie showing that FUCK failed to function as a mark (i.e., was not perceived by the consuming public as an indicator of source), the Board ultimately denied registration.
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By Reid Knabe and Bita Rahebi
This article describes certain key developments in the period from passage of the CHIPS Act through the present day, and provides a brief survey of key grantmaking and investment activity by U.S. government agencies since passage of the Act.
Emerging Legal Terrain: IP Risks from AI’s Role In Drug Discovery
By Fredrick Tsang, Antonia Sequeira and Carl Morales
This article explores the benefits and risks of AI-driven drug discovery from the legal perspective. Since the law governing IP rights in AI-driven drug discovery is still in its infant state, any future legal development is likely to have significant implications in many areas.
LLM Customization With A Path to Human Inventorship and Patent Rights
By Jim Soong
A statutory predicate to the contractual outcome regarding ownership of patent rights is the requirement of a sufficient contribution by a natural person in the effort that yielded the output. The issues implicated by this requirement are one development among more to come as patent law and policy try to catch up to proliferating AI technology.
Adidas Stripe Design Battle Reveals Intricacies of Trademarks In the Fashion World
By Nicole D. Galli, Laura Talley Geyer and Alexa Elder
Although the bitter legal battle between Adidas and Thom Browne is far from over on either side of the pond, the case illustrates the challenges of ensuring trademark protection for simple and widely employed design elements.
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