Why Did the Easy One Fail and the Hard One Succeed? Many years ago, the Vinh-Sanh Trading Corporation began selling rice it imported from southeast Asia under the following trademark, which it called the THREE LADIES BRAND: Here it is on a bag of Thai jasmine rice:...
You Must Be THIS Tall for Copyright Protection Last time I said you should “hate hate hate” a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that reversed Taylor Swift’s victory in a copyright case based the lyrics, “’Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play,...
Maybe Don’t Calm Down This Time When it comes these high-profile music-and-copyright cases, my usual advice has been for everyone to calm down. In the “Blurred Lines” case, I explained that the facts were highly unusual, especially Robin Thicke’s admission that he and...
You Acquired Their Assets, But Did You Get Their Copyrights? The legal equivalent of this— —is trying to assert rights you only think you have. You cock your arm back, ready to throw your rights accurately through your adversary’s defenses, but the ball isn’t there...
Last Thursday, Xavier Becerra, the Attorney General of the State of California, held a press conference to announce the release of the first draft of the regulations to govern business conduct under the CCPA. The press conference was light on details, so privacy...
Whining About Wine The Winestore is a wine retailer based in North Carolina. And all it wants (for purposes of this discussion) is to sell a California cabernet sauvignon called OVERBROOK. The Winestore doesn’t make the wine, of course, but it appears that it’s the...
