Author Archives: mwillee

Now more than ever we are made aware of our reliance upon Amazon in providing us with what we want and need, and for the duration of our current crisis questions about wages and hours for warehouse workers or the sheer dominance of the online retailer and whether that’s good for anybody but Amazon becomeContinue reading “Amazon Wins Trademark Duspute Over Third Party Infringement”

Nothing good can be said of the coronavirus, but to the extend that anything like the slightest silver lining on the darkest cloud can be seen, we can take the smallest amount of solace in the fact that banal misdeeds seem so much lesser now than they did a mere few weeks ago, and inContinue reading “Tesla, Zoox Settle Trade Secrets Lawsuit”

Our current moment of crisis requires some combination of ingenuity and communal spirit and flexibility and, well, the results thus far are a mixed bag. There are countless people willing to give of themselves and their time to help both medical workers working long hours with dangerously low supplies and those people thrown out ofContinue reading “3M Sues Counterfeit N95 Mask Seller for  Trademark Infringement”

The lockdown and isolation that we’re all living through has brought certain realities to light; namely, that as much as many people may have lamented that much of life had moved online prior to March 2020, it was nothing compared to what we’re experiencing right now. The last bastions of in-person activites have shuttered orContinue reading “Online Education Exposes the Flaws of Copyright Law”

In the midst of the pandemic lockdown, artists and musicians have turned to virtual means of staying connected to fans and audiences, as much for their sake as ours. It’s a trite observation given the real challenges they face, but performers do survive on the attention that we’re able to give them, and the moneyContinue reading “Even In A Pandemic, Copyright Bots Don’t Rest (Or Learn)”

Should we applaud someone for doing the right thing, even if it took far too long for them to do it? That’s the question many people might have upon the news that the NFL’s Washington franchise has decided to “retire” their offensive nickname in favor of a new one. While the impetus for the changeContinue reading “Will Trademarks Derail Washington’s Name Change?”

It’s easy, in many instances, to see violations in the IP sphere to be of less consequence than other crimes we see in the news. After all, there’s no physical violence done to any of the parties in those cases, with the only harm being financial, and even that is abstract or theoretical, given thatContinue reading “Former Waymo Employee Sentenced In Trade Secret Theft Case”

We’ve placed an awful lot of faith in technology to fix problems and generally bail us out of issues we’ve created for ourselves as a species, from the biggest existential threats to the smallest inconveniences. Which is all well and good, save for the fact that tech has shown itself to be as smart asContinue reading “Star Trek Comic Con Panel Taken Offline For Copyright Protection Glitch”

If you’ve even spent any time on Twitter (and for your sake, I hope you haven’t) you recognize it as a space largely disassociated from the world in which its users live. While there are plenty of real people engaging in genuine interactions, no one is necessarily attached to any actual identity, and thus millionsContinue reading “Japan’s Twitter Users Liable For Retweets That Violate Copyright Law”

There’s nothing good that can’t be ruined, and nothing bad that can’t be made worse, and that holds true for intellectual property as it does for anything else in life. Take the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), for example; like any law, it has its flaws, but applied in the spirit in which it wasContinue reading “DMCA Copyright Trolls Get In On The Automation Game”