Around the IP Blogs

 

Thanksgiving just gets this Kat all warm and tingly and all kinds of wonderful inside.  Let’s see what the other IP blogs have been up to this week:-

 

Trade Marks

 

“Metaverse” has become centre stage after Facebook announced that it had changed its company name to “Meta”.  Whilst there are conflicting views as to whether this technological concept should be taken seriously, it is without a doubt that metaverse is appearing more frequently in company’s branding efforts.  The Fashion Law recently wrote a post specifically discussing what the metaverse means for trade mark owners.

 

The TTABlog reported that USPTO issued its final regulations under the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 and would likely be useful to trade mark practitioners who handle client’s US trade mark portfolios.  The TTABlog also reported on two decisions of the USPTO, one involving an opposition between P.C. Richard & Son’s registered marks “THE WIZ” and “NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ” and Samsung’s application for “SAMSUNG WIZ”, and another whereby the USPTO refused the registration of an application for “MANSBRAND” as it found it to be confusingly similar to “MANBRAND SKINCARE”.   

 

SpicyIP brought a guest post from Payal Saraogi on a recent decision of the Delhi High Court on Google’s use of trade marks as advertisement keywords. 

 

Copyright

 

With reference to self-driving vehicles, Professor Daniel Gervais discussed his views concerning copyright protection for the output of AI machines on Kluwer Copyright Blog. 

 

Patents

 

Kluwer Patent Blog reported on a recent Danish High Court (Eastern Division) on a long running patent infringement case.  In particular, the decision touched upon the issue of acquiescence/passivity in patent infringement actions.

 

Others

 

Following on its earlier report, Foss Patent provided an update on the Epic Games v Apple injunction.  In response to Apple’s motion to stay the injunction proceedings, Epic Games has now filed its opposition brief.  It will be interesting to see how the case progresses. 

 

The IP Draughts noted that it is becoming increasingly popular to include references to “non-severable improvements” in research contracts and emphasized that blog’s preference for having such terms defined whenever used in a contract.