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Trademarks involving words or elements common in an industry are generally the most challenging trademarks to protect and enforce. This can be especially true in the fashion industry, where common features such as colors, designs, style, and patterns often play a crucial role in conveying brand identity and exclusivity. While combinations of these kinds of common elements may be capable of serving as trademarks, such trademarks can be challenging to register and to protect because the owner must show more to establish their distinctiveness. Even then, such marks are entitled to a narrower ambit of protection against marks made up of even quite similar elements. The dispute between fashion powerhouses Adidas and Thom Browne over stripe designs reveals the intricacies of brand protection and the scope of trademarks based on common elements especially within the fashion world.
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Blockchain Domains: New Developments for Brand Owners
By John McElwaine
Blockchain domain names offer decentralized alternatives to traditional DNS-based domain names, promising enhanced security, privacy and censorship resistance. However, these benefits come with significant challenges, particularly for brand owners seeking to protect their trademarks in these new digital spaces.
AI Can Facilitate Innovation, But It Can Also Become a Potent Patent Killer
By Michael K. Friedland
When is an inventor not an inventor? It’s when the inventor isn’t human. So, if a non-human inventor can’t, in the eyes of patent law, be an inventor, what role can the non-human inventor have in the patent system? The answer is straightforward. Even though it can’t create, it can destroy.
Patent Your Trade Secrets In Wake of Noncompete Ban
By Daniel E. Rose
While it may be growing more difficult to protect business information with the FTC’s noncompete ban, patents can provide strong protection over technical innovations, regardless of whether the inventor stays with the company or leaves.
Key Takeaways from the Latest USPTO Guidance on AI
By James DeCarlo
The April Guidance, which supplements prior guidance issued in February, seeks to remind practitioners of existing rules and to educate them on potential risks associated with artificial intelligence tool use, allowing practitioners to mitigate these risks.