Intellectual Property

The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”), signed into law on December 27, 2020, provides trademark owners with additional tools to challenge registered marks that are no longer in use or have never been used on the goods or services claimed in the registration.  It also establishes a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm in trademark actions for injunctive relief.  The TMA is hailed as one ...
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Who has the right to use architectural plans and drawings prepared by an architect for a specific project?  What happens if the project on which the architect was working and the architect both leave one firm and move to another firm?  What happens if one architect is retained to prepare preliminary plans and then another architect is retained to prepare final plans based on the ...
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In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and the need to quickly develop medical products and services to fight the virus, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is allowing the trademark examination process for marks used to identify qualifying COVID-19 medical products and services to be expedited.  This program expedites the review of qualifying applications by two months.  The USPTO will also waive the ...
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Religious organizations around the world are searching for ways to continue offering religious services in light of the COVID-19 prohibitions against physically gathering in places of worship. This is particularly true right now as people seek to worship during Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, all of which occur in April.  Not being able to gather and worship in person for the foreseeable future has forced religious ...
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One day, you receive a letter from a company or law firm accusing your business of patent infringement.  The letter states that in order to avoid a costly lawsuit, you must pay the company a licensing fee.  You ask yourself whether this is some type of scam and you consider simply throwing the letter away because you have never heard of this company and you ...
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The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides access to various public records, subject to certain exemptions included directly in FOIA or in other statutes, such as the Virginia Public Procurement Act (VPPA). A recent bill amended VPPA §2.2-4342, to prohibit bidders, offerors, or contractors from designating as trade secrets or proprietary information: (1) entire bids, proposals, or prequalification applications; (2) portions of bids, proposals, ...
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Authored by summer associate Paul Hawkins Cyber security is a hot topic in today’s news cycle. Whether it was the much-publicized Sony hack, or the very recent compromise of enormous amounts of highly sensitive U.S. government information, these types of incidents have been shown to be extremely costly to organizations. Today, private companies, large and small, cannot afford to fail to take the proper precautions ...
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Authored by attorney Jane Tucker  What can you do if someone is using your trademark as a domain name without any legitimate rights to that name (i.e. a cybersquatter)? Filing suit for trademark infringement can be impractical (for example, registrant is in a foreign country) and/or cost-prohibitive (trademark infringement litigation, whether in U.S. or in a foreign country, can be expensive). As an alternative, you ...
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Authored by attorney Jane D. Tucker On March 26, 2013 the Trademark Clearinghouse (“TMCH”) was launched by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”).  Owners of registered trademarks can register those trademarks with TMCH.  The TMCH trademark registration system is designed to prevent the unauthorized use of registered trademarks in the new generic top-level domains (“gTLD”) being made available to the public this year.  ...
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