Features

How Energy Drink's "Purple Rain" Trademark Application Was Rejected
Despite the fact that the trademark manual of examining procedure (TMEP) are readily available and searchable online, there are still a large number of applications that trademark examiners and judges must reject because the application does not conform to one or more conditions set forth in the Lanham Act or TMEP.
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Players On the Move
A look at moves among attorneys, law firms, companies and other players in entertainment law.
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Fresh Filings
Notable court filings in entertainment law.
Features

Band Name Rights at Center of Battle Between Founding Isley Brothers
A current dispute over a band name that's worth tracking is one between two founding members of "The Isley Brothers," the legendary r&b group, that focuses on what happens to ownership of the band name rights when one member stops performing with the group but continues to be involved in its business affairs.
Features

The Cold War Between NCAA And States Over Athletes' NILs
Over the past four years, the NCAA aggressively lobbied Congress to pass a uniform NIL standard. Roughly a dozen bills have been sponsored by Democrats and Republicans alike, though none has ever advanced to a vote. Consequently, it appears increasingly likely that the courts will be called upon once again to intervene.
Features

How D.C. Fed. Court Denied Copyright to AI-Created Artwork
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently upheld a final refusal by the U.S. Copyright Office to register a visual work that was "autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine," which the plaintiff called the Creativity Machine and identified as the "author" of the work.
Columns & Departments
Fresh Filings
Notable court filings in entertainment law.
Columns & Departments
Players On the Move
A look at moves among attorneys, law firms, companies and other players in entertainment law.
Columns & Departments
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- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›