On August 11, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that unincorporated associations have the capacity to own their own trademarks and to sue to enforce them. In Southern California Darts Ass’n v. Zaffina, No. 13-55780, the Court affirmed the United States District Court for the Central District of California’s entry of summary judgment […]
Privacy services like GoDaddy’s DomainsByProxy service earn money by enabling domain name registrants to obscure their identities. Any trademark owner whose mark has been used in an infringing domain name may confront substantial difficulty in ascertaining the infringer’s identity if the infringer has utilized such a privacy service. Indeed, creating such difficulty might reasonably be […]
Parties competing for rights to a trademark must establish they used the trademark first, or that they have “priority.” One way to prove priority is through “tacking,” which applies the first use date of a similar mark to the mark at issue. On November 22, 2013, in Hana Financial, Inc. v. Hana Bank, the Ninth […]
On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., No. 11-982, on the issue of whether a federal district court is divested of Article III jurisdiction over a party’s challenge to the validity of a federally registered trademark if the registrant promises not to assert its mark against the […]
Trademark owners sometimes learn of potential infringers indirectly, such as when people mistakenly call or email the trademark owner when attempting to contact the infringer. Often, these confused calls come from the trademark owner’s own vendors or potential investors and strategic partners. While this “non-consumer confusion” is frequently just the first exposure to confusion in […]
June 13 marked “Reveal Day” — the day on which the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) released the list of applied-for generic top-level domains (“gTLD”). These new gTLDs, which follow the “.” in a domain name, expand the number of available options beyond the familiar “.com,” “.org,” “.edu,” and other existing gTLDs. […]
Traditionally, a plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction in a trademark infringement case has been entitled to a presumption of irreparable harm if the plaintiff can prove likelihood of success on the merits. In 2006, the Supreme Court decided eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. The Court there rejected a categorical rule that a patent infringement plaintiff […]
A recent decision by the United States District Court for the District of Arizona held, albeit in a default context, that a domain registrar’s forum selection clause in its registration agreement bound the domain registrant not just in a dispute with the registrar, but with a third party. In LimoStars, Inc. v. New Jersey Car […]
Welcome to the Snell & Wilmer intellectual property and technology litigation blog! Check here for useful news and information about patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, and other IP and technology litigation developments. For links to posts on recent developments occurring before this blog’s launch, click here: pleading, inequitable conduct, inducement of patent infringement, patent invalidity, and […]
