Legal issues being addressed by legislators and courts today that do not involve, address, or relate to artificial intelligence or generative-AI systems, methods or tools. This category includes general copyright, trademark, tort, contract, and constitutional law
The USPTO has announced that trademark fees in the United States will be undergoing significant increases on January 18, 2025. Here is a summary of the changes.
In addition to new Office Action response deadlines, the USPTO has announced that trademark fees in the United States will be significantly increased on January 18, 2025. Here is a summary of the changes.
Application Fees
You will no longer enjoy a discounted fee for filing a TEAS-Plus application instead of a TEAS-Standard application. All applications. other than applications filed under the Madrid Protocol, will require a fee of $350 per class. For Madrid applications, the fee is $600 per class.
Additional fees must be paid in the following situations:
Insufficient information in the application: $100
Use of a custom-made identification of goods or services (as distinguished from using one of the pre-approved descriptions appearing in the Trademark ID Manual): $100
Each additional group of 1,000 characters over the first 1,000 characters in an identification: $200.
Madrid applications are not subject to these additional fees.
Statement of Use Fees
Beginning January 18, 2025, filing a Statement of Use or an Amendment to Allege Use will cost $150 each instead of $100.
Maintenance Fees
The filing fee for a declaration of use under Section 8 or 71 will be $325 per class instead of $225 per class.
The filing fee for an affidavit of incontestability under Section 15 will be $250 per class.
The filing fee for a Section 9 registration will be $350.
In conjunction with the Trademark Office’s new audit program, these fee increases provide a strong incentive to review your registration portfolio to see if there are any registrations, or registration classes, that should be removed.
the DMCA made it unlawful to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to” copyrighted material.
In 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). In addition to establishing the notice-and-take-down regimen with which website and blog owners are (or should be) familiar, the DMCA made it unlawful to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to” copyrighted material. (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A)). The Act set out some permanent exemptions, i.e., situations where circumvention is allowed. In addition, it gave the Librarian of Congress power to periodically establish new ones. These additional exemptions are temporary, lasting for three years, but the Librarian of Congress can and does renew them. On October 18, 2024, the Librarian of Congress issued a Final Rule renewing some exemptions and creating some new ones.
What is “circumvention of a technological measure”?
Circumventing a technological measure means “to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.” (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(3)(A)).
So, no decrypting or unscrambling to get access to a copyrighted work. What else? Well, anything that involves avoiding or bypassing a technological measure without the copyright owner’s permission. You can’t do that, either.
A technological measure that “controls access to a work” can be anything that “requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner,” to gain access to the work.” (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(3)(B)). Entering a password-protected website without a password the copyright owner has authorized you to use is an example.
The permanent exemptions
Section 1201 of Title 17 lists permanent exemptions for:
Nonprofit libraries, archives, and educational institutions that circumvent copyright protection measures solely for the purpose of determining whether to acquire a copy of the work for a permitted purpose
Law enforcement, intelligence, and government activities
Reverse engineering
Encryption research
Prevention of access of minors to material on the Internet
Prevention of the collection or dissemination of personally identifying information
Security testing
Detailed conditions apply to each of these exemptions. If you are thinking of invoking one of them, read the entire statutory provision carefully and seek professional legal advice.
Renewed temporary exemptions
The following temporary exemptions have been renewed for another 3-year term:
Fair use of short portions of motion pictures for certain educational and derivative uses
This includes use in a parody or in a documentary film about the work’s biographical or historically significant nature; use in a noncommercial video; use in nonfiction multimedia e-books; use for educational purposes by educational institution faculty and students; educational uses in Massive Open Online Courses; and educational uses in nonprofit digital and media literacy programs offered by libraries, museum, and other organizations.
Closed captioning and other disability access services by disability service offices or similar units at educational institutions for students, faculty or staff with disabilities
Preservation of copies of motion pictures by an eligible library, archives, or museum
Scholarly research and teaching involving text and data mining of motion pictures or electronic literary works by researchers affiliated with a nonprofit educational institution
Literary work or previously published sheet music that is distributed electronically and include access controls that interfere with assistive technologies
Access to patient data on medical devices or monitoring systems
Computer programs that unlock wireless devices to allow connection of a device to an alternative wireless network
“Jailbreaking” computer programs (computer programs that enable electronic devices to interoperate with or to remove software applications), for the purpose of jailbreaking smartphones and other portable all-purpose computing devices, smart televisions, voice assistant devices, and routers and dedicated networking devices
Computer programs that control motorized land vehicles, marine vessels, and mechanized agricultural vehicles for the purposes of diagnosis, repair, or modification of a vehicle or vessel function
Diagnosis, maintenance or repair of devices designed primarily for use by consumers
Access to computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of medical devices or systems, and related data files, for purposes of diagnosis, maintenance, or repair
Security research
Individual play by video gamers and preservation of video games by a library, archives or museum for which outside server support has been discontinued, and preservation by a library, archives, or museum of discontinued video games that never required server support
Preservation of computer programs by libraries, archives, and museums
Computer programs that operate 3D printers to allow use of alternative material
Investigation of potential infringment of free and open-source computer programs
Again, detailed conditions apply to each of these exemptions. If you are thinking of invoking one of them, read 37 CFR Part 201e carefully and seek professional legal advice.
New Exemptions
New 3-year exemptions the Librarian of Congress just announced in October, 2024 include:
Sharing of copies of corpora by academic researchers with researchers affiliated with other nonprofit institutions of higher education for purposes of conducting independent text or data mining research and teaching, where those researchers are in compliance with the exemption
Diagnosis, maintenance and repair of retail-level commercial food preparation equipment
Access, storage and sharing of vehicle operational and telematics data generated by motorized land vehicles and marine vessels
And once again, detailed conditions apply to each of these exemptions. If you are thinking of invoking one of them, read 37 CFR Part 201e carefully and seek professional legal advice.
a brief overview of the joint custody and equal shared parenting laws of the fifty U.S. states.
Yes, this is off-topic. It is, however, the reason I haven’t been posting to this blog lately. In addition to finishing out some cases, I have been working on developing this 90-minute program for the past few months.
In what seems like a lifetime ago, I practiced family law. During that time, I witnessed first-hand the havoc the sole-custody regime wreaked on families, both parents and children. I’ve always believed there had to be a better way.
In this webinar, I will be presenting a brief overview of the joint custody and equal shared parenting laws of the fifty U.S. states. Professor Daniel Fernandez-Kranz will join me to talk about how equal shared parenting has been working in Spain. Kentucky family law attorney Carl Knochelmann, Jr. will talk about the impact Kentucky’s statute, which is the first-ever presumptive equal shared parenting time law, has been having. Professor Donald Hubin will round things out with a look at what can be learned from Ohio’s experiences with both equal shared parenting and the traditional sole custody model. He will also present findings about the interplay of equal shared parenting laws and domestic violence, based on data gathered from Kentucky and Ohio.
California has approved the webinar for 90-minutes of MCLE and LSCLE (family law specialist) continuing legal education credits. Continuing legal and mediator education credits are available in many other states as well.
The live webinar is on October 24, 2024. There will be a video replay on November 8, 2024.
If you have an interest, you can find more information, and registration links, at EchionCLE.com
I promise I will get back to copyright and trademark issues soon. Or, if you would like, read about other legal issues that have nothing to do with AI and copyright.
