Ricardo Cestero

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If you’re a football fan, like me, you’ve probably heard about the recent antitrust case in which the NFL supposedly suffered a big loss. For those that haven’t heard, here’s the story in a nutshell. For years, NFL teams have jointly licensed their trademarks for use on products like t-shirts, baseball caps, mugs, etc through a company called National Football League Properties (NFLP). About ten years ago, the NFLP decided that only Reebok could make headwear bearing NFL logos. As a result, American Needle, Inc., a competitor of Reebok, lost its contract with NFLP. Faced with the loss of a tremendous revenue source, American Needle did what any proud American would do: it sued, claiming the NFLP was acting improperly as a monopoly and not allowing competition in the NFL headwear business. On May 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that American Needle could proceed with its lawsuit. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Aaron Moss

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I have a two year old daughter at home that won’t eat. I mean, she’ll eat chocolate chip pancakes, but not chicken, or broccoli, or anything that might actually cause her to grow. If only I’d known earlier that the secret to Alyssa’s healthy eating was putting the chicken and broccoli inside the chocolate chip pancakes. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Elisabeth Moriarty

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Science-fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously formulated three laws of prediction, the first of which posits: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” The same could be said of copyright law.

If you believe categorically that something is not copyrightable, you may well be wrong. You have a much better shot at being right if you conclude that this something possibly could be copyrightable, because the answer to the question “Is it subject to copyright protection?” is, more often than not, “It depends.” In other words, the law of copyright is weird, wacky and wonderful. Continue reading the full story . . . »

Ken Basin

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In January 1992, America saw Cosmo Kramer experience a moment of inspiration: a cologne that captures the smell of a day at the beach. But when he brought that idea to Calvin Klein’s marketing department, it received a decidedly frosty reception, with one representative calling it “the dumbest idea I have ever heard.” Imagine Kramer’s dismay then, when in December 1992, Kramer discovered Calvin Klein marketing a fragrance called Ocean by Calvin Klein. “I could have been a fragrance millionaire, Jerry!” he lamented. Continue reading the full story . . . »