A long time ago (circa 1977) in a galaxy not so very far away (our very own Milky Way galaxy) George Lucas unleashed a branding juggernaut when he released the first Star Wars film, Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope. Since then, we've learned to love most things Star...
Ever since I was a kid growing up in Oklahoma, the one thing I've hoped to find under the tree on Christmas morning more than anything else was a Jeep. And, I didn't want just any ol' Jeep. I've always wanted a 1945 Ford "script" Jeep, one of the World War II era...
When Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled from 1985 to 2015 in a modified DeLorean DMC-12 in the second movie of the Back to the Future trilogy, they visited the town square of fictional Hill Valley and the courthouse played a key role in getting them back to their own...
November marked the 100th anniversary of the issuance of the patent for the iconic Coca-Cola bottle design. Oftentimes cited as one of the best examples of trade dress in the world, the Coke bottle design was originally envisioned as a way to mass produce a drink...
In the world of trademarks, the success or failure of trademark infringement lawsuits are measured by the "likelihood of confusion" standard. Broadly speaking, this means that if consumers are likely to be confused (or, better yet, actually are confused) about the...
Last month we reported on the unusual "right of publicity" case involving Harris Faulkner and Hasbro ("A plastic hamster by any other name..."). You may recall that Hasbro, a toy manufacturer, released a line of plastic toy animals with real sounding names, including...
If a major toy manufacturer named a plastic toy hamster after you, would you be upset? Flattered? Angry enough to file a lawsuit in federal court seeking a permanent injunction and monetary damages of more than $5 million? Well, if you're FOX News personality Harris...
As we've previously reported (and with apologies to the author), the grapes of copyright wrath have been trampled by the U.S. court system over the past ten years in a series of lawsuits filed by the descendants of John Steinbeck against one another. With books like...
If you're a fan of the NFL, then you remember last year's Super Bowl. With time running out, the Seattle Seahawks were a play away from scoring the game-winning touchdown when a controversial play call led to an interception by New England and the championship...
As noted in part 1 of this article from the July 2015 issue we discussed our fictional account of acquiring a mobile home park through EBay. The lens we used focused on acquiring a mobile home park as a business (i.e., a going concern). This article will focus on the...
