MediaTech Law

By MIRSKY & COMPANY, PLLC

Trademarks: Why Registering Your Design or Logo May Not Protect You

What are the differences between “special form” (stylized, design, logo) trademarks and “standard character” (word) trademarks?

The 2 basic trademark types are these: (1) “special form” trademarks and (2) “standard character” trademarks. A “special form” trademark that consists of stylized words, letters, numbers and/or a design element such as a logo. A “standard character” trademark consists only of words, letters, or numbers, with no stylization, color or design element.

The issue comes up this way: A company or an individual wants to trademark a brand or company name. So far so good. The first question is does this individual or company have a particular design or logo for its name? If not, then the only type of trademark registration available is a “character” or word mark. If a design or logo is in the mix, then the question is whether or not that design or logo has any value to the company. Obviously examples are the Nike “swoosh” and the Coca-Cola script logo. These are good examples of designs or logos that – separate from the names of the companies themselves – have distinct trademark value for their owners.

Read More

Social Media Policies Violate Federal Labor Law?

A Connecticut company suspended and then fired an employee for making disparaging comments on Facebook about the company and about her supervisor.

Not in dispute is that the employee’s actions violated the company’s social media and other personnel policies, which (among other things) prohibited depicting the company ‘in any way’ on Facebook or other social media sites or from “disparaging” or “discriminatory” “comments when discussing the company or the employee’s superiors” and “co-workers.”

In dispute is whether that social media policy – and the company’s actions in enforcing the policy – violated public policy, in particular Federal labor law.  This came into fast relief when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) subsequently filed a complaint against the company, charging the company with violations of the employee’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Read More

Fair Use and Mashups

I was recently asked about “fair use” standards for use of copyrighted video or audio in mashups.

What’s a Mashup?

First: What are mashups?  From WiseGeek:

A mash-up is a combination of tools or data from multiple sources. Mash-ups typically collect data from multiple web pages and bring their information into one simplified web application.

Mashups are common in the application development world, but also common in music and videos, and examples are legion (and some notorious).  In particular, a music mashup is (according to Squidoo) …

when the vocals from one song are laid over the music of a second song to create a mashed up version that’s both but neither.  If a good job is done, it enhances the original music.

Actually, the last part of that definition is most critical to a fair use analysis.  I recently wrote about fair use in the context of the republishing of copyrighted photographs or artworks in a magazine, book or electronic publications.  

Read More

Facebook Trademarks “FACE” – HOW?

(Thank you to Thomas Yarnell for contributing to this post.)

It’s one thing for Facebook to claim that a website called “Teachbook” infringes upon the “Facebook” trademark. That seems reasonable. But what about when the social network seeks to trademark both the words “FACE” and “BOOK”?

Last week, Facebook took a big step toward securing the first half of its name, as the company received a Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office for the word “FACE”.  Unless something extraordinary happens between now and the pending issuance, soon Facebook will own a registered United States trademark to the word “FACE”.

To be clear, Facebook’s exclusivity is limited to its defined field, namely:

telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

So, on the one hand, exclusivity is narrow.  And this is important, because while Apple Computers owns trademarks for “Apple”, those are limited to computer and electronic products.  

Read More

Fair Use Copying of Photographs and Artwork

Question: Under what circumstances can “fair use” support the editorial republishing of copyrighted photographs or other artworks in a magazine, book or electronic publication?

Short answer: When the previously copyrighted works are the subject of the republishing.

Fuller answer: An “editorial” republishing, almost by definition but with important caveats, satisfies the “fair use” test under the Copyright Act in 17 U.S.C. § 107, in particular by meeting the Act’s four-factor (nonexclusive) criteria:

Read More

Trademark Registration Trumps Prior Use? Not Entirely

Trademark registration generally trumps an unregistered (i.e. common law) use of the same trademark, so says @cyclaw in speaking about trademark registration in Canada.

I had tweeted this #trademark question:

What happens if you apply for – and get – US federal trademark registration, but later find that someone else has been using the same trademark since before you filed?  Or for that matter, does it even matter whether you discovered this other use prior to your filing for registration.

Thank you to @cyclaw for that quick reply.  In the US, though, the answer is slightly different: it matters only whether you can demonstrate your use prior to the date of first use by the other party.  So while US federal registration generally trumps common law use, first-in-time unregistered users do retain certain – albeit limited – rights which survive and trump another party’s later registration.

Read More

Trademarks: Why Necessary to Police Infringement of Your Marks

A little-appreciated requirement for trademark owners is a duty to monitor and police their trademarks.  This duty applies to owners of unregistered trademarks as much as federal registered marks, since registration is not necessary to claim many trademark rights.

What types of activities must be monitored and policed?  Infringement and dilution.  Or in other words, any third party uses of the same trademark or confusingly similar versions that might cause confusion in the marketplace about the source of the goods or services represented by the trademark.

Trademark Duty to Monitor and Police

2 basic reasons to monitor and police: First, the government won’t do it for you.  The Trademark Office is actually quite explicit about stating this, see here.  Second and more to the point, unchallenged third party uses of a trademark could legally – and actually – weaken the strength of the trademark as an identifier of the owner’s goods or services, which in turn weakens the owner’s ability to later enforce the trademark and devalues the worth of the mark.

Read More

The “Socialprise” Law Firm

I’ve set a monthly goal for November of taking tangible steps to make my company a “Socialprise” law firm.  What does that mean?

Let me take inspiration from Dell Computers: “This is not about campaigns or initiatives,” said Richard Binhammer, senior manager, outreach communications and executive initiatives, social media and community, Dell. “It’s about adopting social media as a way to do better business.”  Binhammer was quoted this week in Geoff Livingston’s blog spotlighting Dell’s social media efforts.

Livingston lauds Dell’s early efforts (in the bygone days of 2006 and 2007) as an early and enthusiastic adopter of social media as a customer service tool.  

Read More

Trademark: When NOT desirable to register a trademark?

(Thanks to Neal Seth of Baker Hostetler and Michael Steger of Law Offices of Michael Steger for input on this question.)

“Can I register a trademark for my brand?”  That’s typically the first question asked of a trademark lawyer.  The second question – not always asked – might be “Why would I want to?”  Or rather, is it really advisable?

There is little downside to filing a trademark registration, unless you consider cost and time of little worth.  That aside, there may be little or no business benefit from doing so.

Take for example, a professional services business using the names of the partners, say a law firm or accounting firm.  That’s not to say that Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck had no value in their names and wouldn’t have benefited from trademark protection, but only later when “Sears Roebuck” long-survived and became distinct from the original proprietors.  Until then, there was nothing to stop Ralph Sears and Bob Roebuck from partnering in accounting under the same name, and trademark protection for the mail-order business wouldn’t have stopped the CPAs from doing so.

A trademark may have little value to the business.  A retail business operating in one or few local locations only has nothing to gain from trademark protection, since out-of-town challengers to its name pose no threat to its business.

Similarly, generic or descriptive company names cannot even be registered under trademark in the first place, or at best only under the trademark office’s supplemental register (rather than the Principal Register), with its very limited protection.  An example might be “New York Trucking Company”.  (For a nice comparison of the Supplemental and Principal Registers, see here.

Another example is a case where you might be able to register the mark, but you have no real intent or interest in enforcing.  As Neal Seth pointed out, “You don’t need to register if you are not going to enforce it.  In other words, you might not care if somebody else uses the mark.”  It begs the question of what value you would get in the registration – and why spend the time and money to register – if you’re not going to enforce.

Read More

Actual Halloween Story: Trademark “Field of Screams”?

Yes, possibly the most important lawsuit since the sad case of the hamburger joint sued by the Washington white shoe law firm, playing now at a theater on Connecticut Avenue.

Well, maybe the most important lawsuit in trademark’s hoary world.

“Field of Screams” – Maryland version – is the annual Halloween fundraiser put on by the Olney (Md.) Boys and Girls Community Sports Association.  “Field of Screams” – Pennsylvania version – aka Field of Screams LLC, filed suit for trademark infringement in Maryland federal court, claiming exclusive trademark rights to the name, if not in the entire United States at least in the mid-Atlantic region.  Our intrepid blogger recently came upon the seminal legal development while perusing the Metro section in the Washington Post.  Legal filings in the case can be found through the Federal court system’s PACER service, here.

Pennsylvania’s trademark claim rests on its pre-dating the Maryland spookfest, and claims of consumer confusion as to source – the “likelihood of confusion” test for trademark infringement.  Indeed, Pennsylvania horror proprietor Jim Schopf told the Post of numerous instances of tickets purchased through his operation’s website by Halloween revelers thinking they had locked in dates at the Maryland “Field”.

Read More

FTC Blogger Rules: Why Not Disclose Advertising?

FTC enforcement of its new blogger guidelines has involved typically high-profile actions against Anne Taylor LOFT (FTC ultimately taking no action) and Reverb Communications (for allegedly deceptive postings of positive reviews on iTunes for games produced by Reverb clients).

While premature to draw any broad conclusions on the enforcement environment for the new rules, a philosophical problem with the FTC’s new blogger framework is its willful ignorance of the advertising underpinnings of traditional media.

So, for example, while established newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post depend for their credibility on perceived soundness of the journalistic “church-state” divide, readers are almost never proactively alerted to major advertising support from common story subjects in business and politics.  Disclosure more typically comes from investment or ownership relationships, in the form of “full disclosure” statements like that from Ezra Klein when reporting about Facebook (“Disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham is on Facebook’s board, and The Post markets itself on Facebook.”).  Not, though, from advertising relationships, even major advertisers.

At least not with newspapers.  PBS’ Newshour, NPR and other public news broadcasts commonly disclose underwriting relationships involving story subjects.  However, the same cannot be said of commercial television news broadcasts unless they involve investment or ownership relationships.

Since the underwriting structure of public broadcasting is substantively no different than the advertising relationships of newspapers, commercial television and most media websites, editorial disclosure of the financial support – of any kind – of such media outlets seems equally appropriate.

Citizen Media Law Project, in its coverage of Anne Taylor action, notes that the FTC guidelines limit disclosure to cases where the sponsorship relationship is not “reasonably expected by the audience”.

Put in the context of audience reasonable expectation, this seems rather generously written for the benefit of old-line media, which has relied for generations on the presumption of credibility by its readership much more so than disclosure.

Why then, shouldn’t bloggers be afforded the same benefit of the doubt that newspaper publishers have been given for generations?  Yes, there will always be egregious cases of paid-for “earned media” such as the Reverb case with iTunes.  But it used to be that time and dedicated readership was the ultimate arbiter of media influence.

This all begs the question of why the expectation of the relationship – rather than actual influence – is the measuring stick.

Read More

Software License vs. Sale: Copyright’s “First Sale”

An interesting case comes out of the West earlier this month under Copyright law’s “first sale” doctrine, involving computer software under a license agreement.

Copyright’s “first sale” doctrine

The “first sale” doctrine involves this concept: If you buy a copyrighted work (say, a painting, or a book, or – as in this case – software – you have an unqualified right to transfer your copy of that work to anybody as you please.  That doesn’t mean you can make additional copies and sell those too, but generally it does mean that you are free to resell something that you purchase.  (As will be discussed below, the operative term is “purchased”.)

The doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court in a 1908 case, and later codified by Congress into the Copyright Act in the 1976 amendments to the Act.

Read More