Last month, a federal judge in Colorado ordered Thomas Kutrubes to pay his former employer, Atlas Biologicals, Inc., $2,048,180.50. Kutrubes had been an employee, board member, and owner of 7% of the stock in Atlas, which specializes in the production of bovine serum, a byproduct of cow blood used for cell culture and scientific research. While still working for Atlas, [...]
New overtime rules developed by the US Department of Labor (DOL) are scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2020. These rules, announced last week, are expected to make 1.3 million American workers newly eligible for overtime pay. Employees are excluded from overtime protection if they are salaried (that is, their pay is not subject to reduction based on [...]
Professional basketball player LeBron James is known not only for his skills on the court but also for his love of tacos. He frequently uses the term "Taco Tuesday" in his social media posts about his family's celebration of Taco Tuesday. His company LBJ Trademarks, LLC, recently filed an application to register the mark TACO TUESDAY for use in connection [...]
A number of states (including Oregon and Washington), counties, and cities have enacted pay-parity laws which usually, among other things, prohibit employers from requesting or relying upon the pay history of applicants or employees. A third of the states now have laws prohibiting or restricting an employer's use of pay history, though a few apply only to state employers: Alabama, [...]
Could you be liable for the infringing activities of your tenants? It may surprise you to learn that the answer is "yes." In a number of cases, commercial landlords have been held responsible for contributory trademark infringement. Although contributory trademark infringement is not specifically addressed in the federal trademark statutes, the US Supreme Court has endorsed this judicially created doctrine. [...]
Myths about copyright infringement abound. Many people believe they're not infringing if they change the original by a certain percentage (sometimes as low as 10%), or if they copy less than a certain percentage of the original work (e.g., 30%). Unfortunately, it's rarely that easy to know when copying is infringing, and if you're going by one of these fake [...]
Employers often conduct background checks when hiring a new employee or considering an employee for promotion, but they don't always realize that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) has strict requirements they must follow. This law applies to both large and small employers, and even applies to individuals hiring a single employee. An employer who violates FCRA may be required [...]
Generally, the person who creates a work is considered to be the author of that work under the copyright law, and, absent a written assignment agreement, the author is the owner of the copyright. There is, however, a major exception to this general rule: the work-made-for-hire doctrine. If a work is "made for hire," the person who commissioned the work [...]
Trademark infringement and counterfeit products are a serious problem in the Amazon marketplace. In order to help combat these problems, Amazon updated its Amazon Brand Registry to allow trademark owners to search for infringements on the site with text and image search. The registry also provides a streamlined method for reporting infringements. To qualify for protection on the Amazon Brand [...]
Federal trademark law requires trademark owners to police their marks. This means that trademark owners must diligently enforce their rights to prevent their marks from being used by others without permission. Although there's no fixed statute of limitations for a federal trademark infringement lawsuit, an infringer can raise a defense known as "laches." The laches doctrine is based on the [...]
