Blog – Adam Garson Law

consequence of abandonment

Over the years, we have written about many trademark-related concepts and many times we have referenced the consequence of “abandonment,” referring to the penalty that a trademark owner may suffer from not adhering to trademark formalities. But what does it mean for a trademark to go abandoned and under what circumstances does it occur? What Causes Trademark […]

joseph story

Cast your mind back to your earliest memory.  Mine is of little green bottles of Coca-Cola on the back seat of our Plymouth, out of gas, somewhere in southern Indiana.  Now think about your grandfather’s earliest memory.  I’m not sure what my grandfather’s first memory was, but Grover Cleveland was President and the Wright brothers […]

By now, we are all familiar with the term “deepfake.” If you are not, the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines “deepfake” as a “video that has been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another, often used maliciously to show someone doing something that he or she did not do.”  Over a year […]

Drug Enforcement Agency

In the May and June newsletters, we wrote about a proposal by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to transfer marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Schedule I substances are considered to have no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.  Possession and sale of cannabis is illegal under U.S. federal […]

Kona Coffee

Dear Doc: I understand that under United States Trademark Law, you can’t register marks that are “primarily geographically descriptive” as you can in other countries, but you may register “geographic indications” as certification or collective marks. For example, in France, champagne has to actually come from Champagne and Roquefort has to come from Roquefort. The […]

Bullet Vending Machine

Your team created a new invention, say, for a vending machine that dispenses bullets.* The patent law requires that the name of each “inventor” be listed in the patent application and the inventors’ names are included on the issued patent.  Being an inventor on a patent can be a huge feather in the cap of an employee.   […]

Psychedelic Mushrooms

The past few years have witnessed astonishing growth in commercial interest in the use of psychedelics for treatment of a variety of unmet medical needs, particularly mental health disorders.  With that growth has come an increase in patent filings as companies seek to protect their investments.  IP protection for psychedelics and psychedelic-related compounds shares many […]

Olympics copyrights

The Olympic Rings The modern Olympics is replete with symbols, many of which are wrongly ascribed to the ancient games. The most obvious is the five interlocking Olympic rings, which were “invented” in 1913 by Pierre de Coubertin, then-President of the International Olympic Committee. Some authors have ascribed the rings to an ancient inscription on […]