Daan Erikson will present, "The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bad Spaniels Case," at the Federal Bar Association's Intellectual Property Law Section CLE program regarding two of the Supreme Court's Lanham Act decisions from the 2022 Term on Wednesday, September 6, 2023.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bad Spaniels Case
On June 8, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, holding that parody trademarks do not receive special First Amendment protection when they function as trademarks. This talk will review the decision and its possible implications for future parody trademarks, as well as guidance gleaned from the concurring opinions regarding the use of brands in creative works and the use of surveys in litigation.
Abitron Case Regarding Extraterritorial Application of the Lanham Act
This part of the program will discuss Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., issued June 29, 2023, in which the Supreme Court, for the first time in seventy years, has decided a case involving the extraterritorial application of the Lanham Act. In so doing, it has resolved a circuit split on the applicability of the Lanham Act actions involving foreign conduct. In Abitron, the Court concluded that the Lanham Act applies only to domestic conduct and does not apply extraterritorially to purely foreign sales that never reached the United States or confused U.S. consumers. Abitron is an important case because of the Court’s restrained view on the extent to which a U.S. company may seek damages for exterritorial trademark infringement. The talk will review the Court’s reasoning and speculate on the practical ramifications of the decision.
Presenters:
Oliver A. Ruiz, Chair of the FBA’s Intellectual Property Law Section (Moderator)
Daan G. Erikson, Partner, Husch Blackwell LLP
Prof. Marshall A. Leaffer, Distinguished Scholar in Intellectual Property
For more information, visit the program website.