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Using Unique Product Features or Designs to Register Trademarks
Billy Joel famously sang about how dressing in fashion requires a lot of money. Still, today's fashionistas want to achieve stylish looks for less, whether from an established fashion house or an up-and-coming designer. While it is well known that brands register their brand names as trademarks, the issue goes beyond mere name registration. In an era where dupes flood the market, online forums often suggest that "as long as sellers don't claim to sell authentic products or use the brand name in marketing, it's a legal grey area."
It's not a legal grey area, though. Brand identity extends well beyond a brand name to encompass various elements. To truly protect your brand, consider what other features or designs can be registered as trademarks. Unique product features or signature designs can be registered as trademarks when properly positioned. Besides a brand name, the question is, what other brand elements communicate their source to consumers such that they can be registered as trademarks?
What Can Be Registered As a Trademark?
The U.S. Trademark Act defines a trademark as "any word, name, symbol or device, or any combination thereof" used to identify and distinguish one party's goods from another's (15 U.S.C. 1127). This broad definition encompasses several different types of source identifiers, including many considered "nontraditional" because they are not words.
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Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Anti-Assignment Override Provisions
UCC Sections 9406(d) and 9408(a) are one of the most powerful, yet least understood, sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. On their face, they appear to override anti-assignment provisions in agreements that would limit the grant of a security interest. But do these sections really work?