Our “On My Mind” Blog covers legal subjects we believe are useful, interesting and topical. The posts are short and non-technical in style. We mostly choose topics about trademark, copyright and patent matters, but we also cover topics concerning our other practice areas, including Customs & Regulatory Compliance, Commercial & Corporate, Trusts & Estates, and Employment Law, among others.
Articles: 1-10 of 79
“CHATGPT” Held Merely Descriptive But Nevertheless Registrable as a Mark
USA - April 16 2026 The term GPT stands for “generative pretrained transformer,” which software developers understand to refer to a machine learning algorithm that is…
GOOD TIMES for Bourbon Trademark
USA - April 9 2026 The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) rarely reverses an Examining Attorney’s refusal to register a mark on likelihood of confusion grounds. In…
Marks Have Boundaries in Trademark Proceedings
USA - March 19 2026 We previously wrote that boundaries exist in trademark proceedings where the marks are similar but the services differ (“Services Have Boundaries in…
The U.S. Supplemental Register
USA - February 5 2026 What is the Supplemental Register in the U.S.? Why apply to register a mark on the Supplemental Register? Can a registration on the Supplemental…
Life is Like a Box of “Thank You” Chocolates
European Union, USA - December 15 2025 Do you think that the following marks in German and French, both for chocolate and both meaning “thank you,” are likely to be confused…
Splitting the Baby in U.S. Trademark Law: The Second Circuit Affirms Trademark Co-Ownership Verdict in Zioness Movement v. The Lawfare Project
USA - October 21 2025 In the Old Testament, King Solomon proposed to resolve a dispute between two women who both claimed to be the mother of an infant by declaring that…
Services Have Boundaries in Trademark Proceedings
USA - October 16 2025 In order to succeed in challenging the registration of a service mark on the ground that it is likely to cause confusion with your identical or…
BOSTON STRONG Fails to Function as a Mark for a Volleyball Team
USA - August 21 2025 The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) affirmed the refusal of an intent to use application to register BOSTON STRONG as a service mark for…
What May Constitute a Trademark “Mutilation”
USA - May 8 2025 If an element of a composite mark does not present a separate and distinct commercial impression, an application to register that element is said to…
Trademark’s Zone of Natural Expansion is Defensive Not Offensive
USA - April 24 2025 The first user of a mark for particular goods or services has superior rights against a subsequent user of the same or similar mark for any goods or…
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