By: Lauren Ciancia Until recent months, the fashion industry was unique from its artistic counterparts in that intellectual property protection was afforded only to counterfeit goods, namely “any [good] that infringe[s] on a registered trademark or falsely purport[s] to be authentic.”i This may bring to mind the image of a street stand table strewn with [...]

By: L.S. On June 26, 2007, Rebecca Charles, owner of Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village, filed suit in the Federal District Court in Manhattan against her former employee, Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo. She alleged trade dress and trade secret infringement. The next day, the New York [...]

By: Jason Lunardi Will an emerging “making available” right enable copyright owners to defeat piracy or will it spell the end of privacy for P2P users? The Copyright Act of 1976 explicitly grants exclusive rights to authors of copyrighted works. 17 U.S.C. § 106. This bundle of rights includes the exclusive right to: 1) reproduce [...]

By: Chris Reid Much digital ink has been spilled over the legal fog surrounding today’s online video games and the rights (or lack thereof) of their players. The confluence of copyright law and videogames may once have seemed to many as best left to academics or bored teenagers. However, one need only look up the [...]

By: Joe Quintero Trade secrets are meant to protect a firm’s intellectual property, but what happens when that protection actually hurts the public at large. This is the very situation that is going on right now in the world of electronic voting machines where there is an ongoing conflict between manufacturer’s and regulators. After the [...]