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The U.S. legal system is currently adjudicating at least two high profile cases that, I dear to say, have geopolitical implications. One case is in a D.C. federal court where former Yukos Oil shareholders are asking the court to enforce a $50 billion award against Russia issued by a Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal in 2014. (The award is worth around one-quarter of Russia’s total government budget.) The Arbitration tribunal found that Russia engaged in an illegal campaign to disband Yukos...

This time of year most folks reflect on the year that passed, looking into the new year. Newspapers and magazines compile various rankings. Legal publications come up with lists of most important cases or events of 2015. The Sputnik Blog will not miss this opportunity and do some reflecting and ranking of its own. The Sputnik Blog discussed many trademark cases in 2015. Some of those cases made it to various unofficial rankings of most important US legal cases. Take for example, Top 10 Trademark...

On March 24, 2015, the US Supreme Court handed down a long-anticipated opinion in a trademark case. It held that decisions of the US Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) may, in some cases between the same parties, have preclusive effect on likelihood ...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court published its decision on Hana Financial Inc. v. Hana Bank, case number 13-1211. No surprises. Unanimously, the nine justices of the Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and held that a jury should decide whether tacking is available in a jury case. Under the tacking doctrine, a trademark owner is permitted to make certain modifications to its mark over time without losing priority, i.e., the date of first use of the older mark, when there is a dispute with...

On December 2, the Supreme Court held an oral argument on an issue that directly impacts one of the most important strategic decisions a trademark litigator makes: whether to oppose (cancel) someone’s trademark in a Trademark Office’s administrative proceeding or sue that party in a district court. The issue came from B&B Hardware Inc. v. Hargis Industries Inc. et al., and is framed as follows: whether an earlier ruling by U.S. Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB or Board) on...

Just six days after its significant decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons Inc. that the first-sale rule in copyright law applies to works first sold outside the U.S. (discussed in this blog), the U.S. Supreme Court refused to decide the same issue for patents. The denial of certiorari in Ninestar Technology Co. et al. v. U.S. International Trade Commission et al. puzzled many observers including this Blogger. On March 25, 2013, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by printer cartridge maker...

US consumers win, consumers in less developed countries loose. Retailers win, copyright and luxury brand owners loose. This summarizes the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 19, 2013 ruling that the Copyright Act’s first-sale doctrine extends to products made and copyright works sold outside the U.S. Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, reversed a lower court’s decision that the federal copyright law’s first-sale doctrine applied only to U.S.-made goods. (Curiously...