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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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Beyond Language: How Multimodal AI Sees the Bigger Picture
By Matthew R. Carey
The possibilities for patenting innovative applications of multimodal models across industries are endless.
Protecting Technology-Assisted Works and Inventions: Where Does AI Begin?
By Ed Lanquist, Jr. and Dominic Rota
Just like any new technology, efforts to protect and enforce intellectual property on AI-based technologies are likely to be hampered by a lack of both a unified governing framework and a common understanding of the technology.
Content-Licensing Payment Dispute Turns On Existence of Fiduciary Relationship
By Stan Soocher
A recent New York federal court decision in a dispute between a broker that sublicenses program content and a broadcaster that sublicensed content from the broker considered the interaction of contract language and extra-contractual elements of the parties’ relationship to determine whether a fiduciary relationship existed.
Federal Judge Blasts Patent Trolls
By Rob Maier
A recent order from Chief Judge Colm Connolly in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware may serve as a warning for “patent trolls” — the derogatory term used to describe companies whose sole function is to acquire and then assert patents, often in cases that are questionable on the merits — against filing cases in Delaware going forward.