The purpose of this lesson is to supplement your study of money damage recoveries permitted by The Lanham Act. Damage awards for trademark infringement may receive coverage in either your Remedies course or in your Trademark or Intellectual Property courses. This lesson will serve to introduce, review, and refine the principles you have studied in these respective courses to assist you in determining when damage awards for trademark infringement will be allowed.
Read moreThis lesson builds on the concepts that you may have been introduced to in Professor Robert Lind's lesson on the classification of marks, e.g., generic marks, descriptive marks, suggestive marks, arbitrary marks, and fanciful marks. Specifically, this lesson will concentrate on the validity of a mark for trademark protection purposes when the trademark or trade dress is not inherently distinctive.
Read moreThis lesson introduces you to the rules governing the award of injunctive relief in actions for trademark infringement. In trademark infringement cases, the harm or loss suffered by a plaintiff is often difficult to prove because of the lack of evidence of a causal connection between the harm and the defendant's wrongful conduct. To account for this evidentiary shortfall, the judicial preference in awarding relief in trademark infringement cases is injunctive relief. Despite this judicial preference, monetary remedies remain available for trademark infringement.
Read moreThis lesson covers the types of marks that are deemed eligible for protection under federal and state dilution laws. Although the focus is on eligibility under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (Lanham Act section 43(c)), there is coverage of the different types of state dilution statutes -- those based on the earlier (1964) Model State Trademark Bill (such as Massachusetts), and those based on the federal statute.
Read moreThis lesson covers the fair use and related "nominative" fair use defenses to claims of trademark infringement.
Read moreThis lesson provides an overview of the central role of "use" in United States trademark law. It examines how the policy justifications driving trademark law (1) justify generally requiring use to obtain and maintain trademark rights and related infringement considerations and (2) define sufficient use for those trademark law purposes. It also addresses and explains the few specific exceptions to the use requirement. The lesson assumes a basic knowledge of trademark policy, the distinctiveness classification system and infringement.
Read moreThis lesson is a follow up to the European Union-Trademark Basics lesson. It presents additional information concerning two topics: "Unusual" marks and Exhaustion of trademark rights.
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