| Deceptive and Deceptively Misdescriptive Trademarks |
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| Trademarks that are determined to be deceptive are not protected and may not be registered. Like deceptive marks, deceptively misdescriptive marks tend to mislead consumers as to the underlying product. However, deceptively misdescriptive marks do not meet the requirements of a deceptive mark as there is not a bad intent or reliance by purchasers upon the misdescription. Trademarks that are determined to be deceptively misdescriptive may be registered on the Principal Register upon a showing of secondary meaning or distinctiveness. More... |
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| Copyright Clause |
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| The founding fathers recognized that everyone would benefit if creative people were encouraged to create new intellectual and artistic works. Copyright is established in Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution. More... |
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| Procedures before Copyright Royalty Judges |
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| Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels (CARPs) are ad hoc panels administered by the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office. CARPs adjust the rates and distribute the royalty fees collected under the various compulsory licenses and statutory obligations of the Copyright Act. More... |
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| Trademark Fair Use |
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| A party is entitled to use a trademark in such as way as to describe the qualities that a mark represents as long as the manner of use of the mark is not as a trademark but only used in a descriptive sense. Fair use of a trademark occurs when a defendant uses a descriptive trademark of another party to describe the defendant's own product. This is the fair use defense set forth in the Lanham Act that provides: More... |
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| Typeface as Trademark Subject Matter |
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| There are three types of protection that can be afforded to typefaces and fonts in addition to basic license agreements: trademark, design patent, and copyright. These are intended to keep non licensees from copying the fonts in some way and passing them off as original material. The trademark system is the weakest form of protection, allowing only the font name itself to be protected. This means that no one is allowed to use a currently existing typeface name for a new font, even if the fonts are completely unrelated. The design patent system is the strongest, but it is the most uncommon type of protection. More... |
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