Dear Doc:I heard that it’s now legal to take someone else’s photograph, mess with it, and sell it as your own. That can’t be right, right? Please tell me that the copyright law is not that insane. Signed, Every person who ever took a photo.   Dear Every:   Yes, I am afraid that copyright […]

 The Navy just received a patent on flying saucer technology.  No, I don’t mean a circular wing that flies like every other aircraft.  I mean a craft that relies on laws of physics that neither Newton nor Einstein would recognize. The patent, by Navy inventor Dr. Salvatore Pais, describes what is literally anti-gravity technology, referred […]

Earlier this year we wrote about recent trends in trademark filings by China. Between 2013 in 2017 Chinese companies filed more as PTO said than 50,000 trademark applications With the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The increase in filings could be explained by growth in the Chinese economy and Chinese government subsidies, paying […]

Dear Doc: My cardiologist says that I need to cut out salt. My copyright lawyer says that salting is useful. What gives? Signed, Patient but Confused   Dear PbC:   No wonder you’re confused! You think that doctors and lawyers speak the same language?!? The Doc never heard anything so funny!   Let’s get this […]

Nearly two years ago we wrote about the Washington Redskins and its efforts to maintain their registration of REDSKINS, which the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled because it was disparaging of Native Americans.  The U.S. Supreme Court took up the cause in an unrelated case, Matal v. Tam, and held that section 2(a) of […]

In last May’s newsletter we told you about proposed changes to the patent statute to, hopefully, correct some of the damage that the Supreme Court has done to the U.S. patent system over the last decade.  Among other things, the Supreme Court has expanded the judge-made categories of inventions that cannot be patented to include […]