With last weekend’s release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars is once again living and thriving. Rogue One opened with a most impressive $155 million opening in North America, and $290 million worldwide, making it the 12th largest opening in United States History. Now, this isn’t really related to intellectual property, but

The Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) provides broad immunity for “providers of interactive computer services.” In essence, if an internet service provider falls within certain parameters, it is entitled to immunity against certain claims of liability brought under state law. Last month, the Ninth Circuit again considered the breadth of such immunity in the case, Kimzey

When fashion fuses with high tech, we see our friends show up with trendy wearables, such as smart watches, fitness bands, and even high-tech, designer purses.  But, trendiness aside, wearables raise numerous questions for designers, manufacturers and consumers relating to intellectual property, data privacy and data security.  For example, how does a company protect the

Scott-Hervey-10-web6/25/16-  At the 7th Annual  VidCon in Anaheim, CA , Weintraub Tobin Shareholder Scott M. Hervey and Rian Bosak, Head of Network Operations Full Screen, presented  “Fair Use and Youtube- A Creator’s Take” to a standing room only audience of digital media creators and industry professionals.  Check out their presentation below:

The word that comes after the period in a domain name is referred to as a topScott-Hervey-10-web level domain (“TLD”) and there seems to be a TLD for everything. There are TLDs that reflect geographic regions such as “.ASIA” for the Asia-Pacific region and .IRISH for the global Irish community. There are numerous other TLDs that reflect a wide variety of interests, including professions (“.ACTOR” for actors and “.ACCOUNTANTS” for accountants). Just when you think you have seen everything, along comes a proposed new TLD that causes a huge uproar among trademark owners.

Vox Populi Registry Inc. was granted the right to operate the registry for a “.SUCKS” TLD. The stated purpose of the .SUCKS TLD is to facilitate First Amendment criticism of companies, organizations or products.   Trademark owners say that Vox is a shakedown artist and the sole purpose of the .SUCKS registry is to cause trademark owners to purchase expensive domains in order to defend their brands. In support of this allegation, trademark owners point to the fact that Vox will charge trademark owners approximately $2500 and up to register a .SUCKS domain name during the Sunrise Period. (A Sunrise Period is a period of time during the rollout of a new TLD in which trademark owners have the right to register domain names which reflect their brands in the new TLD.) Trademark owners argue that when compared to the registration fee of $249 charged by Vox during the general availability period and when compared to the few hundred dollars charged by other TLD registrars during their Sunrise Period, it is obvious that this scheme is nothing more than “predatory, exploitative and coercive.”Continue Reading That Would .SUCK