Westmont Living, Inc. v. Retirement Unlimited, Inc. is a trademark infringement case that originated in the Eastern District of Virginia and was appealed to the Fourth Circuit. At issue were competing motions to dismiss. A senior-living company called Westmont Living had the registered trademark WESTMONT LIVING, which they claimed Retirement Unlimited (RUI) infringed with its…
As one of my attorney mentors once said, mistakes can happen – it’s what you do upon learning of the mistake that counts. In Barbera v. Grailed, LLC, plaintiff photographer was sanctioned for failing to comply with discovery in the Southern District of New York. The picture in question was of Jonah Hill that was…
Teradyne v. Ace Test Systems Inc. was a case that began in the Central District of California, but made its way up to the Ninth Circuit for a fair use analysis. With an eye toward the Supreme Court case of Google v. Oracle, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s claim…
OpenAI v. Open Artificial Intelligence Inc. is a case currently in the Northern District of California that pits an AI David versus an AI Goliath — but in a classic reverse trademark confusion case. OpenAI is the owner of the popular ChatGPT service, and Open Artificial Intelligence, Inc. (OAI) is a company that sprung up…
In re Audemars Piguet Holding SA was a precedential decision handed down by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB). The case concerned trade dress, and had some surprising twists and turns. Audemars Piguet (Audemars), maker of luxury watches, filed an application for the trade dress in the design of two of their watches. The…
A children’s book author came to me about a demand letter she had received from another author’s lawyer. The letter alleged that there were “too many” similarities between our client’s book and the other author’s book, and that our client had infringed the other author’s copyright. The letter was accompanied by a chart like the…
Kohls v. Ellison is an ongoing case in the U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota concerning the state’s anti-digital manipulation law (Minn. Stat. 609.771), which prohibits the use of so-called deepfakes in political campaigning. Deep fakes are digitally manipulated videos, pictures, or audio that generally make people appear to be doing something that never happened. …
Walgreens Co. v. Charles R. Walgreen is a case from the Northern District of Illinois that featured the behemoth retailer Walgreens (Walgreens Co.) suing Charles Walgreen, the great-grandson of its founder, for trademark infringement. After losing a motion to dismiss, Walgreen Co. filed an amended complaint saying that Charles Walgreen was not only infringing on…
Raw Story Media v. Open AI, Inc. was a case filed in the Southern District of New York involving the generative artificial intelligence app ChatGPT. The court dismissed the case before the parties even started discovery. A group of news media companies sued the collection of companies that make up ChatGPT. The organizations suing Open…
Crocs v. Effervescent was a case appealed from the District of Colorado to the Federal Circuit. The appellants were Double Diamond and Mojave Desert Holdings, who make “Dawgs” shoes. After suing a number of other companies for patent infringement, Crocs had turned its sights on Dawgs — but Dawgs filed a counterclaim that Crocs was…