All posts by: Adam Garson

About Adam Garson

A few years ago, at the behest of some photographers, we wrote about whether uploading images to Flickr.com or Instagram was equivalent to “publication” under the Copyright Act.   We concluded that it is.  Another “photographic” issue has arisen in our practice, whether thumbnail images posted on a website or on an e-mail, could be construed as permissible “fair use” […]

  If you are a regular reader of our newsletter, you may recall that in 2014 we wrote about a copyright case involving Mike Tyson’s Maori-inspired facial tattoo. In that case, the tattoo artist, Victor Whitmill, sued Warner Brothers Entertainment in an attempt to stop the release of the movie, “Hangover Part II.” in which one […]

Many small to medium size businesses go to great pains to protect their intellectual property under United States law. It makes sense given that they, typically, do not sell their goods and services beyond our national frontier. So they register trademarks and patents with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), register copyrights with […]

The Washington Redskins NFL team has been fighting for years to maintain its registered trademarks containing the term REDSKINS. Its on and off again fight has been hotly debated in public, press and the courts. Finally, the United States Supreme Court has weighed in.  Funny enough, the case before them was not that of the Redskins but […]

Is Google Guilty of “Genericide”? Mr. Chris Gillespie must have thought he had a brilliant idea when he registered multiple domain names that included the term “Google,” such as “googledisney.com,” “googleBarackObama.net,” “Googlenewtvs.com” and others. Did he truly believe that Google would not sue him?   Or was this part of a grander scheme?  Think about the […]

I was browsing through my copy of the “Copyright Law of the United States,” which I purchased from the Government Printing Office some years ago. I noticed that inside the opening pages where you would normally find a copyright notice, the page contained a quote from the United States Constitution: The Congress shall have Power… […]

Trademark owners have a duty to defend their trademarks against possible and actual infringement. Ignore infringers and your trademark rights may evaporate.  Defending trademarks, however, is a full time job and not for the weak of heart (or wallet).  The beverage industry is a breeding ground of intellectual property disputes and trademark owners aggressively defend […]