The battle between Mattel, the makers of the iconic Barbie doll, and MGA, the company that created the Bratz dolls, did not just feature a decade-long trial over an incredibly successful toy, but a war over who owns ideas.

The webinar will focus on issues concerning the registration of trademarks associated with the sale of various alcoholic beverages, as well as service marks regarding services involving the sale of alcoholic beverages. The webinar will assess the potential for consumer confusion, as well as issues regarding descriptiveness, geographic descriptiveness, genericness, trade dress, and consent agreements when seeking to register a mark used in connection with alcoholic beverages.

This program will discuss the US Copyright Office’s report on Moral Rights, how to navigate the US moral rights “patchwork” regime, and how the US and EU’s differing approaches are creating uncertainty for creators, aggregators, and online platforms.

During this webinar we will discuss the implications of the new draft regulations released by the CA Attorney General. Additionally, we will discuss how these regulations may affect different types of businesses differently, including businesses with traditional physical retail locations, online businesses, and hybrid models.

Street artists seeking copyright protection for their murals face many hurdles. One increasingly important one is 17 USC 120(a), part of 1990 legislation extending copyright protection to architectural works for the first time. Section 120(a) limits the new copyright protections for architecture, providing “the copyright in an architectural work ... does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of … photographs … of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.”

On November 15, 2019, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the final appeal of Oracle v. Google, with dramatic global implications for interoperability, innovation, and competition. The culmination of over nine years of furiously fought litigation between two technology titans, this case concerns nothing less than the scope of copyright protection for software and the freedom to interoperate.

Nowhere are mediation skills more important than in resolving intellectual property disputes. This program will examine how mediators adapt the process to fit the situation presented by individual cases and how counsel for the parties can be most effective in using the process to achieve positive results for their clients. The focus will be on how resolution through mediation is often quite appropriates for intellectual property cases, especially those where non-monetary and/or relationship issues predominate.

In this program, Geetha Kandiah—an accomplished international IP attorney whose contributions to the field have been recognized by Managing IP publications and World Trademark Review —will guide practitioners through some of the exciting trademark law updates in Malaysia and Myanmar.  Among the key changes —Malaysia’s recent accession to the Madrid Protocol will ease filing requirements and streamline fees, and the new Act also provides for recognition of non-traditional marks, vulnerability to non-use revocation, and the recognition of privilege for communications with registered trademark agents.