In response to calls to centralize all trademark appeals to the Federal Circuit, leading trademark expert – literally, the man who wrote the book on trademarks – J. Thomas McCarthy (and Dina Roumiantseva), think not.
With some regularity over the years, a proposal is made to change the Lanham Act so that appeals in all Lanham Act trademark and false advertising cases from district courts across the United States will be diverted from the regional circuit courts of appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. We think it is time to discuss this proposal head on and hopefully to convince the reader that this diversion is not a good idea and should never be implemented. Advocates of this proposal claim that trademark law would benefit from the consistency that a single appeals court could provide and that the Federal Circuit has exceptional expertise in trademark law. We believe, however, that trademark law does not suffer from the kind of circuit conflict that led to the channeling of all patent appeals to the Federal Circuit in 1982. Moreover, our review of case law suggests that some regional circuits have a comparable or greater experience with trademark law. We argue that no change in the present system of trademark appeals is needed.
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The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office is set to open a satellite office in Dallas, Texas on 9 November 2015.
In a longstanding dispute between advocates of urban farming and the Dervaes family of Pasadena, a federal district judge gave opponents of the Dervaes’ a partial victory when he ordered cancellation of the trademark for URBAN HOMESTEADING on the grounds that the mark is too generic a term to deserve protection.
**Update 
Ipsen and Telesta Therapeutics Inc. announced yesterday that they have entered into an exclusive licensing agreement for Ipsen to develop and commercialize MCNA1 for the treatment of high risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) in all countries of the world, with the exception of the United States (because Telesta is establishing commercial operations there), Canada, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea and Japan.
Yelp, Inc. has sued “South Park” creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Comedy Central for damages caused by the latest episode of South Park which lampooned the customer review and local business rating website, entitled “You’re Not Yelping”. Yelp seeks $10 million in damages for libel and slander.
Darren Geliebter
Mathew Lombard
THE PRINCIPAL REGISTER 