Trademark

Earlier this month, the British High Court made history by issuing an injunction via Twitter to stop an anonymous Twitter user from impersonating right-wing political blogger and lawyer Donal Blaney.  The Twitter account in question, @blaneysblarney, is named after Blaney's blog, uses a real photo of Blaney, and does not give any indication that the account is a fake or parody.  The High Court stated that this is a clear breach of Blaney's intellectual property rights and ordered the user to stop posting and immediately identify him or herself to the court via a web link form.  The Twitter user targeted by the injunction will receive a direct message with a link to the injunction from Blaney's attorney the next time he or she accesses Twitter.

While you are in town for the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, Perkins Coie, D.A. Davidson and the Generator Group invite you to take some time to unwind at Salt Lake City's Grand America Hotel. Connect with other industry leaders, learn how social media is affecting the industry and enjoy an evening of cocktails, dinner, or both.

A federal district court in Virginia recently issued a preliminary injunction to prevent a company from using a competitor's trademarks online.  Deltek Inc. v. Iuovo Systems, Inc., No. 09-330 (E.D. Va. Apr. 20, 2009).  In this case, Deltek sued Iuovo for visibly using the Deltek name to advertise services and for including the mark in meta tags to drive traffic to the Iuovo website.  The court held that this use may cause consumers to erroneously conclude that Iuovo is affiliated with Deltek and, therefore, amounts to trademark infringement.

The holiday season is marked by many colorful, highly competitive ad campaigns. Conducting a legal review of advertising materials can go a long way toward managing legal liability and associated costs. Advertising review should cover a number of issues, including copyright, trademark and right of publicity/privacy issues, comparative advertising, claim substantiation, offer terms, and regulator and industry self-regulation compliance issues, to name a few.

In-house counsel, game company CEOs, and any other interested parties are invited to attend this roundtable to be held April 24, 2008, in Perkins Coie's Seattle offices.

Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular Wireless each contracted with DirectRevenue LLC to deliver ads to consumers. To service its clients (including Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular Wireless), DR installed adware on millions of computers. The adware, which was undisclosed to users and difficult to remove, monitored the websites visited by the users and collected the information they typed into web forms. The NY AG filed a law suit alleging that DirectRevenue had violated New York consumer protection law, then pursued DirectRevenue's three major advertiser clients.

Audi AG ("Audi") filed a lawsuit against Bob D'Amato ("D'Amato") alleging that D'Amato's audisport.com website infringed and diluted Audi's trademarks. Audi further alleged that D'Amato violated the AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act through his use of the audisport.com website. Audi filed a motion for summary judgment and prevailed on this motion at the trial level. On appeal, the appellate court affirmed the district court's ruling concluding that D'Amato was liable for trademark infringement, dilution, and violation of the AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

Plaintiff Louis Vuitton Malletier ("Louis Vuitton") sued Haute Diggity Dog, LLC ("HDD") seeking to prevent HDD from selling its "Chewy Vuitton" line of dog toys and dog beds.

On October 6, 2006, President Bush signed the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 into law.  The law was formulated as a response to a case in which Victoria's Secret unsuccessfully sued over the issue of trademark dilution from use of the name "Victor's Little Secret."  The U.S. Supreme Court held that actual dilution had to be established for a dilution claim to succeed.  The new law changes the standard to one that matches the rest of trademark law—now, a trademark holder need only establish likelihood of dilution to prevail.

79 USPQ2d 1844 (DC SNY 2006). Online pharmaceutical retailers sued by Merck & Co. for trademark infringement based on the retailers' use of the term "Zocor" to describe generic pharmaceutical drugs that they sold online.  Merck further claimed that the retailers engaged in trademark infringement by purchasing "Zocor" as a keyword for advertisements appearing on Internet search engines' websites.

437 F.Supp.2d 273 (D.N.J. 2006). Online cigar retailer sued search engine for trademark infringement and fraud.

Does an adult novelty shop called "Victor's Little Secret" dilute the famous "Victoria's Secret" mark? The recent U.S. Supreme Court case Moseley v. Victoria's Secret Catalogue addressed this issue – with the result that proving dilution of a famous mark is now even more difficult.