Category Archives: Trademark

As commerce becomes increasingly electronic and decentralized, manufacturers and brand owners face new challenges in protecting and enforcing their intellectual property rights in the context of online marketplaces. IP owners, courts and the marketplaces themselves are struggling to define fair, effective and efficient approaches to protecting IP rights and consumers without hindering the free flow of online commerce.

Foley Hoag presents a webinar covering recent developments and best practices for companies seeking to protect copyrights, … More

Business is booming for cannabis ventures, but the legal landscape for related intellectual property protection and product advertising is rife with complications that demand special consideration, and companies should be paying attention to these issues out of the gate.

Foley Hoag presents a webinar covering a range of topics related to cannabis IP protection and promotion, including:

• Maximizing trademark rights at the federal and state level
• Leveraging copyright as secondary protection for brands
• Cannabis patent basics and strategies
• Advertising best practices and what not to say FDA regulation of cannabis and cannabis-derived products
• CBD,…

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Our colleague and fellow advertising lawyer, Dave Kluft, wrote a great piece on the challenges of obtaining copyright protection for product labels consisting of a unique collection of elements (e.g., text, color, framing, or ordinary shapes) but not otherwise incorporating content sufficiently original to merit copyright protection in its own right.  Originally published on our Trademark and Copyright Law Blog, we are republishing it here given its relevance to advertisers. … More

Welcome!

We were delighted last month when Foley Hoag LLP named us as the new co-chairs of the firm’s Advertising and Marketing Law group.  This month, as our first official act, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Advertising and Marketing Law Blog.

Advertising and marketing regulation and litigation can be a complicated game.  Really complicated. … More

The Intersection of Trademarks, Advertising and Corporate Social Responsibility

Protecting the value of your corporate brand is a critical mission. As companies are increasingly asked to make disclosures regarding their efforts to address social and environmental risks, these disclosures create both opportunities and challenges for those entrusted with protecting a company’s intangible assets.

In this webinar, we explore the interrelationship between trademarks, false advertising and emerging compliance requirements in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR).… More

If you’re interested in garbage, the crass objectification of male celebrities, or both – or if you consider the two roughly equivalent – have I got a false advertising case for you!  Despite their “Don’t Get Mad; Get Glad” tagline, the makers of Glad trash bags got pretty mad at a recent advertising campaign launched by their competitor, Hefty. So mad, in fact, that they filed a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Better Business Bureau.… More

This post first appeared in Law360 as “10 Considerations When Advertising On Social Media,” published on September 21, 2016.

Most modern advertising campaigns include social media components. In fact, it is not uncommon today to see products advertised exclusively on social media. For the most part, the same rules that govern traditional advertising also govern commercial speech on social media.… More

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finalized guidance for industry describing the agency’s evaluation process for proposed proprietary names for drug and biological products.  The guidance applies to all prescription and nonprescription drug products, innovator and generic drug products, and biological products.  Drug products that may be legally marketed without an approved application are excluded (e.g., OTC drugs legally marketed under a tentative or final monograph). … More

The Better Business Bureau announced last Thursday that it has amended its Code of Advertising to address the new and evolving ways in which advertisers reach consumers through technology.  The Better Business Bureau is the administrative parent of the advertising industry’s self-regulatory bodies, including the National Advertising Division.

As advertisers market to consumers who spend more time looking at smart phones and computer screens than television screens and magazines (the traditional media of mass-market advertising),… More

In a lawsuit recently filed in the Southern District of Florida, Global Beverage Enterprises, Inc. (“Global”), the manufacturer of specialty carbonated beverages like Mr. Q. Cumber Sparkling Cucumber Beverage, brought Lanham Act claims against CytoSport, Inc., alleging false advertising of CytoSport’s popular Muscle Milk line of beverages.  The basis of the claim is that the Muscle Milk beverages contain no milk and, therefore, the product name is false and misleading. … More

 When we last posted about Lexmark v. Static Control, we expected that the Supreme Court would endorse one of the circuit court tests to determine whether Static Control, the maker of a chip that facilitates printer cartridge remanufacturing, had standing to bring a false advertising claim against Lexmark, a company that makes printers and printer cartridges but is not strictly a competitor of Static Control.… More

A recent opinion from the Western District of Virginia sets forth a useful framework for analyzing a variety of Lanham Act claims based on false commercial speech uttered in social media.

In October 2012, “Jim Chung” created a LinkedIn profile for himself.  Chung identified himself as a 2010 graduate of Tsinghua University, a resident of Xinjiang,… More