When he was on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert committed to a character that has the same name as his. The character is a greenback conservative who keeps an American shield under his desk—a character who popularized the word “truthiness” (yes, it’s a real word). When Colbert took over David Letterman’s job on…
Atlantic Recording Corp. has filed a petition in the New York State Supreme Court seeking to compel the internet message board Reddit to reveal who posted a link that directed the user to a pirated version of a song that hadn’t been released yet. The recording is named “Heathens,” performed by a hip-hop duo named 21…
When we negotiate contracts with large corporations on behalf of computer programmers, app developers, and website developers, it’s like playing chess with someone who’s very good at the game—you have to assume that everything you write is going to be considered carefully. You’re not going to squeeze something by a big company; it has experienced, in-house counsel just…
Let’s say I have a client who does landscaping. Their customer paid for part of the job by credit card and part of it in cash and was told to wait several weeks to see how things grow. A few days later, the customer emailed the landscaper: This is a terrible job. I’m disputing the credit…
Recently a client of ours was approached by a company that buys and sells domain names. It was claiming to represent another company that wanted to buy our client’s domain name—but remain anonymous. I was intrigued and took to the internet to search through all of the new products coming out with names that were similar to our client’s…
In a recent appeal, the issue of poundage came up. The appeal involved our client, who was the plaintiff in trial court, and an appellant, who had been the defendant — and whose sizeable bank account was frozen by a City Marshal after the court imposed a judgment favorable to our client. Early on in the process,…
We all know that web pages often serve as retailers. With that in mind, an intellectual property attorney from Turkey asked me a great question at the INTA 2016 conference in Orlando: “Can showing products online be enough to show use of a trademark in the United States?” Fortunately, U.S. trademark guidelines for the U.S. Patent and Trademark…
Recently, a copyright case years in the making has come back into the news. The heir to the composer of a song called “Taurus,” performed by a band called Spirit, had filed suit against a little-known band called Led Zeppelin over something called “Stairway to Heaven.” In March, a court in California denied Led Zeppelin’s…
To best protect clients, we need to be sure the attorney-client relationship is clear, to avoid any potential problems that could arise during litigation. In most cases, where a client comes to you for advice about a specific matter and then retains you for a particular case, the rules governing attorney-client privilege can be quite straightforward.…
Filing for copyright registration is extremely important for a number of reasons. Most people already know that they cannot sue for infringement until after registration. What they might not realize is that they are not entitled to statutory damages or attorney’s fees for any infringement that occurs prior to registration. This distinction should not be underestimated:…