Turns out that when India acceded to the Madrid Protocol on July 8 of this year, it elected to, per Article 14.5 of the Protocol, only accept extensions of International Registration that were created after July 8, which, on July 8, included zero percent of the world’s International Registrations (see the May 29 docs on the WIPO site here).

Justia summary: Plaintiffs filed suit under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq., against defendants, alleging trademark infringement based on a theory that defendants misappropriated and have unauthorized commercial use in the United States of certain United States-registered trademarks related to “Stolichnaya” – brand vodka (the “Marks”). At issue on appeal was whether plaintiffs have sufficient claim to the Marks to sue for infringement under the Act. The court concluded that FTE was neither (1) the Russian Federation’s “assign” of the marks nor (2) its “legal representative.” The court also concluded that Cristall could not sue, since its rights as a plaintiff were purely derivative of those held by FTE, and FTE could not grant rights greater than its own; the court rejected plaintiffs’ joint argument that they were entitled to proceed because the Russian Federation had “ratified” their suit; and, therefore, neither plaintiff was entitled to sue for infringement under section 1114(1). Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the Third Amended Complaint with prejudice.

fed treasury v spi 2d cir
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43(b)log: Keller v. EA: visual elements mean game isn’t protected by First Amendment:

“As the dissent pointed out, “[t]he logical consequence of the majority view is that all realistic depictions of actual persons, no matter how incidental, are protected by a state law right of publicity regardless of the creative context. This logic jeopardizes the creative use of historic figures in motion pictures, books, and sound recordings.” (In practice, I expect the dissent will be wrong, given the persistent medium discrimination in which courts engage—but it could be right about motion pictures!)”

From Prof Goldman’s Tech & Marketing Law Blog, a guest post by Prof Tyler Ochoa: Rationalizing (?) the Hart and Keller v. EA Sports Publicity Rights Rulings

Prof Goldman’s Intro:

“It does a great job demonstrating that the interplay between the First Amendment and the publicity rights is completely anarchy, which isn’t surprising given that we don’t really understand what we’re trying to accomplish with the publicity rights doctrines in the first place. The post also raises the unexplained paradox why courts are more solicitous of publicity rights than Lanham Act claims, even though the latter involves consumer confusion/deception while the former doesn’t.“

Victory Outreach owns a registration for VICTORY OUTREACH. Third party uses VICTORY OUTREACH and obtains Twitter handle @victoryoutreach. Plaintiff contacts Twitter, which declines to terminate account. Plaintiff sues Twitter on contributory liability theory.

victory outreach v twitter
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