Patent Attorneys from Marger Johnson to Join Miller Nash Graham & Dunn

By Alicia Bell on Posted in Firm News, Intellectual Property, Patents

Our intellectual property team is pleased to announce that seven attorneys from Marger Johnson, a well-respected 32-year-old patent law firm, will be joining our firm’s IP practice on July 1, 2018. We are looking forward to welcoming the following patent attorneys:

Each attorney has extensive experience working in all aspects of patent law, including electronic circuits and hardware, technology, engineering, bioscience, software, and computer arts. Beyond patent strength, they will augment our broad intellectual property practice, applying their varied and well-rounded backgrounds as engineers or former in-house counsel at well-known corporations like Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, Micron Technologies, Sharp Labs America, and Louisiana Pacific.

On behalf of Miller Nash Graham & Dunn’s IP team, we are happy to announce the expansion of our IP practice and look forward to introducing each of our new attorneys and their specific experience in future posts on this blog.

The GDPR Protects Infringers, Not Brand Owners: It’s Now More Difficult to Fight Cybercrime

By Julianne Henley on Posted in International Updates

We’ve all read dozens of articles, blog posts, and tweets about how GDPR is coming. Unlike Game of Thrones’ much-promised winter, GDPR arrived relatively quickly.

With all this lead up, the message has essentially been that the General Data Protection Regulation (the long and rarely used origin of the term GDPR): (a) originates from the European Union (EU), but essentially applies everywhere; (b) will be dealt with by many websites outside the EU by simply blocking EU IP addresses to avoid compliance (this has already happened, including by sites such as The Chicago Tribune and LA Times); and (c) is designed to help EU citizens understand how their data is being used, and provide a mechanism for objecting.

What we haven’t seen in the press is much coverage on the negative impacts to intellectual property attorneys and their clients.  Continue Reading

Counterfeit Goods Spread Feces on Your Face (and Other Reasons Consumers Should Avoid Counterfeit Goods)

By Julianne Henley on Posted in Intellectual Property

Curtailing counterfeit goods is a major focus for brand owners who collectively spend billions of dollars a year to combat counterfeit goods worldwide.[1] Right now, the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition is holding its annual conference in Seattle, where I assist clients by protecting and enforcing their brands through trademark registrations, copyright registrations, domain name registrations, customs recordations, and by providing targeted anticounterfeiting advice.

Why are counterfeit goods such a problem? There are several factors, but two of the biggest factors are controlled by consumers:

  • Consumers who want the prestige of the branded product, without the price. This is a supply-and-demand issue.
  • Consumers who don’t realize they’re purchasing counterfeit goods. This is an education issue.

For years, the emphasis has been on curtailing the act of manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods. While this will remain an important mission, significant strides can be made by educating consumers about what they are really buying when they purchase counterfeit goods. Here are the top three reasons to avoid counterfeit goods, and five tips to help you discern whether goods are counterfeit. Continue Reading

Replacement Parts Manufacturer Gets Burned: Music City Metals Co., Inc. v. Jingchang Cai

By Brian Esler on Posted in Copyright, Trademarks

Music City Metals (MCM) built a thriving business designing and selling replacement parts for name-brand BBQ grills. Too good, it turns out, as a number of foreign competitors also jumped into the game, copying MCM’s own replacement parts and selling those replacements for the replacements. While MCM thought it was fine to market itself as providing replacement parts for other companies’ grills, and to use those other companies’ trademarks to explain which grills its products fit, MCM was not so happy to see these competitors using MCM’s marks and other information to market their parts as replacements for MCM’s (replacement) parts. So MCM sued about 60 competitors for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, and certain state law claims, and was able to achieve some initial success by obtaining a temporary restraining order against most of them. But it was MCM that felt the heat once a judge was able to consider the matter on something less than an emergency basis. Continue Reading

Alicia Bell and Carla Quisenberry Published in Oregon Beer Growler: Protecting Your Brewery’s Intellectual Property Can Pay Off in a Big Way

By Alicia Bell and Carla Todenhagen Quisenberry on Posted in Intellectual Property

Although brewing is a collegial industry, brewery competition does grow tighter, and there’s a growing interesting in protecting brands—and even innovative beer recipes and processes—as intellectual property. In an article for Oregon Beer Growler, Alicia Bell and Carla Quisenberry discuss what brewery owners can do to protect their intellectual property.

To read the full article, click here.

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