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Kennedy Law Blog
3 Reasons to Hire a Copyright Lawyer
U.S. Copyright Law falls under Intellectual Property Law. It protects a wide range of original...
How to Trademark Your Business Name
As a business owner, it is exciting to have a business that is making progress and becoming...
Think Before you Click the Link
Recently, I received an email from a client with a suspicious link. Being a cautious litigator, I investigated the email before clicking the link. After speaking with my client, I learned that his email had been hacked. Phishing links, hacking, and identify theft are...
The Eagles Won’t Be Welcoming You to this Hotel California
Famed rock band The Eagles are suing a hotel located in Todos Santos, Mexico. If you guessed that the hotel was named Hotel California, which is also the name of the famous Eagles’ ballad, you would be partially correct. The hotel’s current owners purchased the Todos...
Appeals Court “Corrects, Clarifies, or Retracts” the Meaning of “Maintain” in the Defamation Mitigation Act
A Texas appeals court just took the first crack at interpreting an ambiguously troubling aspect of the Defamation Mitigation Act in Hardy v. Communication Workers of Am. Local 6215 AFL-CIO, et al., 05-16-00829-CV, 2017 WL 1192800 (Tex. App.—Dallas Mar. 31, 2017,...
What Else Can Be a Trademark?
The majority of us easily recognize famous word and/or logo marks that we routinely encounter. For example, the average American would instantly associate the golden arches with McDonalds or know that “Melts in your mouth not in your hand” corresponds with M&Ms,...
The Patent Marking Statute: A Legal Fiction
Just about every piece of new technology incorporates intellectual property from patents to trademarks to copyrights. A cell phone has somewhere between 100 to 1,000 patents covering everything from the screen to the battery. I recently purchased conduit for an...
A New View on the Merger Doctrine
Generally under Texas law, when you sue on a note and recover a judgment, you are limited to your remedies in the judgment under the "merger" doctrine, in which the note merges into the judgment. The merger doctrine is an application of res judicata, which stops...
Supreme Court Removes Laches Defense from Patent Infringement Actions
In a 7-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court has held that laches cannot be invoked as a defense against a claim for patent infringement damages within § 286’s six year statute of limitations period in SCA Hygiene Products v. First Quality Baby Products. Laches...
Bell’s Patent On the Telephone
It was 141 years ago today, March 7, 1876, that Alexander Graham Bell received U.S. Letters Patent No, 174,465 covering his latest invention – the telephone. The original patent application was filed just three weeks earlier on February 14, 1876. In fact, Bell’s...
Federal Circuit Affirms Death Penalty Sanctions in ITC Case
On February 15, 2017, the Federal Circuit affirmed a default-type death penalty sanction against a party found to have intentionally destroyed evidence in an investigation of patent infringement by the International Trade Commission. The case is Organik Kimya v....