April 27, 2017 Panel: A Name Worth Fighting For? The Slants, Trademark Law, and Free Expression; Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

[Kip Currier: Looking forward to attending this panel--addressing very interesting IP and free speech issues--and hearing the band play afterwards]

A Name Worth Fighting For? The Slants, Trademark Law, and Free Expression

Event Date: 

Thursday, April 27, 2017 - 4:30pm to 7:00pm

Event Location:

• Union Africa Room (3rd Fl.)

Event Audience:

• Alumni
• Current Students
• General Public

Cost: 

$60.00 
$60 or $50 for CLE Program, Reception, and Music

Continuing Legal Education

A Name Worth Fighting For? The Slants, Trademark Law, and Free Expression 

Join Duquesne Law, the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Association, and the Federal Bar Association’s Pittsburgh chapter for a special program about the rock band that is the subject of a current U.S. Supreme Court case. 

The continuing legal education (CLE) course focuses The Slants, an Asian-American musical group whose trademark application was denied for its use of a term deemed derogatory, and the case Lee v. Tam. 

The program features Simon Tam, the band’s founder and bassist, Hon. Cathy Bissoon of U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania, and Christine Haight Farley, a law professor from American University. Associate Dean Jacob H Rooksby, an intellectual property professor at Duquesne, will moderate a discussion about trademark law, including whether the band’s choice to claim the name should be protected by the First Amendment.

The CLE will review Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act of 1946, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office used to deny the band’s trademark application; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision reversing the trademark office’s determination; and freedom of expression issues. 

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on Lee v. Tam in January. The ongoing legal battle has been covered by the New York Times, NPR, and other media outlets. This CLE will offer insight into the fight by the band’s founder as well as an opportunity to hear the group’s music. A 45-minute concert and light reception will follow the CLE program.

4:30 p.m. – 6 p.m. CLE

6:15 p.m. – 7 p.m. Concert 

Judge tosses challenge to M-22 logo trademark; Michigan Radio, April 25, 2017

Rick Pluta, Michigan Radio; 

Judge tosses challenge to M-22 logo trademark

"A federal judge has thrown out the state’s challenge to a Traverse City business that trademarked a highway sign.

The company brands t-shirts, water bottles, wine, and other merchandise with the M-22 logo. Attorney General Bill Schuette said a company can’t do that because the sign belongs to the public. But a federal judge said the state couldn’t show how its interests are harmed by the trademark."

‘Remix’ or plagiarism? Artists battle over a Chicago mural of Michelle Obama.; Washington Post, April 24, 2017

Derek Hawkins, Washington Post; ‘Remix’ or plagiarism? Artists battle over a Chicago mural of Michelle Obama.

"Devins’s mural had only been up for a matter of hours when word got back to Mesfin. She objected to the use of her work without permission in a widely circulated Instagram post that triggered a wave of outrage online, saying she felt like Devins stole her piece.

“I was very disheartened when he did that,” Mesfin told The Washington Post. “There’s a common code among all artists that you can get inspired by someone’s work but you have to pay homage and you have to give credit for it.”...

Devins said he never intended to take credit for Mesfin’s creation, which itself was based off a portrait in the New York Times by photographer Collier Schorr. Mesfin credited Schorr’s work on her Instagram post...

Devins said he came across Mesfin’s drawing on the sharing site Pinterest and was unable to track down the artist. He explained his decision to use the image without permission in an analogy, saying he was creating a “remix” of a piece of art in the way that a DJ remixes songs."

'Reconstituted' Arthur Andersen closes U.S. offices amid trademark infringement suit; Accounting Today, April 20, 2017

Michael Cohn, Accounting Today; 

'Reconstituted' Arthur Andersen closes U.S. offices amid trademark infringement suit

"The original Arthur Andersen and Andersen Worldwide collapsed in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals of the early 2000s. However, the new entity's rights to the Andersen brand and trademark were challenged by Andersen Tax, a firm founded by a group of 23 former Andersen partners that has been growing its presence around the world after buying the rights to the Andersen name and changing its name from WTAS to Andersen Tax in 2014 (see Firms vie over rights to Arthur Andersen name).

Andersen Tax CEO Mark Vorsatz filed suit against Laffont-Réveilhac and several of his colleagues in France and the U.S. accusing them of trademark infringement, as the legal battle grew more contentious (see Dispute over Arthur Andersen name heats up). With former CEOs and managing partners of the original Arthur Andersen throwing their support behind Andersen Tax, along with the founder's great-granddaughter Kristin Andersen, the new Arthur Andersen canceled a press conference that was scheduled for last month in New York in which it had promised to answer questions about the dispute and provide testimonials from several Andersen alumni (see Former Andersen chiefs support Andersen Tax in dispute over Andersen name and Dispute over Arthur Andersen legacy continues)."

Four Reasons EMC Was First To Use A Trademark And Still Lost Its Case; Forbes, April 19, 2017

Jess Collen, Forbes; 

Four Reasons EMC Was First To Use A Trademark And Still Lost Its Case

"Do you get superior rights to use a trademark when you are the first to file for registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office?

Not necessarily. A lot of companies know this already. The earliest date of first use usually prevails, even over a federal trademark registration. Sometimes, the question of “who did what, and when?” is difficult to sort out. To earn trademark rights, you must use the mark in a way that creates a sufficient association between your trademark, and your product, in the minds of the purchasing public. Not all use is created equal."

Copyright system needs to be replaced: Vanderbilt professor; Research News @ Vanderbilt, April 20, 2017

Jim Patterson, Research News @ Vanderbilt; 

Copyright system needs to be replaced: Vanderbilt professor

"In his new book, (Re)stucturing Copyright: A Comprehensive Path to International Copyright Reform (2017, Edward Elgar Publishing), Gervais suggests replacing the current copyright system with something much simpler.

“I’m proposing a system that rewrites all the rights and exceptions in a structured way,” he said. “Ultimately, we need a new version of the Berne Convention. It would send a great signal if the countries got together and said, ‘Let’s fix this.’”

Gervais suggests a broader use of licensing without affecting fair use. This would allow the use of more copyrights but also help creators to get paid. He acknowledges there are some users who are determined not to pay, but believes it is less of a problem than it seems...

“If we put aside this civil war mentality between users and providers, there would probably be far less money lost to piracy than most people think.”"

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria: "Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them."; The Atlantic, April 20, 2017

James Somers, The Atlantic; Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria: "Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them."

"After the settlement failed, Clancy told me that at Google “there was just this air let out of the balloon.” Despite eventually winning Authors Guild v. Google, and having the courts declare that displaying snippets of copyrighted books was fair use, the company all but shut down its scanning operation.

It was strange to me, the idea that somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25-million books and nobody is allowed to read them. It’s like that scene at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie where they put the Ark of the Covenant back on a shelf somewhere, lost in the chaos of a vast warehouse. It’s there. The books are there. People have been trying to build a library like this for ages—to do so, they’ve said, would be to erect one of the great humanitarian artifacts of all time—and here we’ve done the work to make it real and we were about to give it to the world and now, instead, it’s 50 or 60 petabytes on disk, and the only people who can see it are half a dozen engineers on the project who happen to have access because they’re the ones responsible for locking it up."