The landscape for international inventors is shifting. On December 29, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks to end the era of...
Can a person “own” the art on someone else’s skin? That was the high-stakes question at the heart of the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Sedlik v. von Drachenberg. In a case that...
Privacy law is complicated. While U.S. courts have generally refused to recognize personal data as a traditional property right, the right to privacy is a tantamount constitutional right with high...
Privacy law and intellectual property law are two distinct yet increasingly interconnected areas of U.S. law. While I.P. protects creative and innovative works, privacy law protects personal...
One of the fundamental principles of trademark law is that certain terms cannot function as trademarks because, as being merely descriptive of the goods or sources, these marks lack the role as an...
When the USPTO examines trademark applications or when courts assess potential trademark infringement, they rely on a multifaceted analysis to determine whether two marks are likely to cause consumer...
The federal Lanham Act provides trademark owners various legal causes of action, including trademark infringement and dilution. While trademark infringement requires proof of consumer confusion,...
The question of who – or what – can be an author has become one of the most contentious issues in modern copyright law. As artificial intelligence systems generate increasingly sophisticated creative...
Trademark law intersects with First Amendment free speech rights in several key ways: Prior Restraint and Content-Based Restrictions: When the government denies trademark registration based on the...
At the complex intersection of trademark law and First Amendment protections, courts have developed a sophisticated framework to balance commercial trademark rights under the Lanham Act against First...