Category: Intellectual Property

In an extremely long opinion, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) affirmed a refusal to register Apple’s SMART KEYBOARD trademark based on genericness for “Accessory for a handheld mobile digital device, namely, a protective and decorative cover for a tablet computer that functions as a computer stand and incorporates a keyboard” on the Supplemental…

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a rule that a proposed trademark consisting of a generic term (e.g. “computer” for computers) and a generic top-level domain (“TLD”) (like .com) is automatically generic. That decision was previously blogged about here: https://t-rexlaw.com/supreme-court-rules-booking-dot-yeah/, and the decision looked closely at whether the domain name Booking.com was intrinsically…

Trying to register a trademark for cannabis-related goods and services? Be careful what you apply for. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) recently issued a decision that continues the trend of not allowing registration of trademarks that cover cannabis-related goods or services. On a basic level, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) refuses…

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) released a 2020 update on women as inventor/patentees, which discusses data collected on the number and percentage of women listed as inventors for U.S. patents. The report was a followup to a 2019 report and includes additional data based on nearly one (1) million issued patents and…