In 2011, two women established a public Facebook group where parents and community members could discuss matters related to the Los Lunas, New Mexico school district. This online forum served as a space for open dialogue about local education issues for seven years before drawing administrative attention. In 2018, the district's superintendent discovered the group [...]
Several property management companies in the Washington, D.C. area advertised rental properties on Facebook, but only to users aged 50 and younger. Plaintiff, a 55-year-old woman, never saw these ads while searching for housing. She sued, claiming the companies discriminated against her based on age. Plaintiff argued that by excluding users over 50 from seeing [...]
A long-running trademark case between two real estate companies over the mark DEWBERRY reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the lower court improperly awarded profits from non-party companies. The decision clarified that only a named defendant's profits – not those of its affiliates – can be recovered in a trademark infringement case. The [...]
The City and County of San Francisco sued the Port of Oakland and the City of Oakland alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition. The dispute began when Oakland renamed its airport "San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport," which San Francisco claimed created confusion and harmed the brand of its own airport, San Francisco International Airport [...]
On April 10, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") issued guidance to attorneys about using AI in matters before the USPTO. While there are no new rules implemented to address the use of AI, the guidance seeks to remind practitioners of the existing rules, inform of risks, and provide suggestions for mitigating [...]
In the months leading up to the FDA shutting down plaintiff’s business, one of the co-owners of the business left and set up a competing enterprise. For a few weeks, the former co-owner set plaintiff’s domain name to forward to the new company’s website. Plaintiff sued and the court held that redirecting the URL was [...]
In February 2023, Sonny Estival, known by his pseudonym “Mason Rothschild,” was found liable by a jury on a number of claims, including intentional trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and cybersquatting against luxury brand Hermès. The court ordered Estival to pay $133,000 in damages to Hermès and issued a comprehensive permanent injunction against him and his [...]
Last year the Supreme Court decided the case of Andy Warhol Foundation Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, 143 S. Ct. 1258 (2023). [Read our blog post from shortly after the decision.] The case was particularly intriguing because it involved the artwork of a famous artist (Andy Warhol) that depicted a famous musician (Prince). The court's decision [...]
In addition to causing free speech concerns, the bill is troubling in the way it gives unchecked power to the Executive Branch. Earlier this week the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that is being characterized as one that could ban TikTok. Styled as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the text [...]
Plaintiff authors sued large language model provider OpenAI and related entities for copyright infringement, alleging that plaintiffs’ books were used to train ChatGPT. Plaintiffs asserted six causes of action against various OpenAI entities: (1) direct copyright infringement, (2) vicarious infringement, (3) violation of Section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), (4) unfair competition [...]
