As Fiona the hippo, at the Cincinnati Zoo, battled from being born six weeks premature to weighing 375 pounds with a healthy side of sass, she gathered a huge and fierce following.  #TeamFiona has taken the world by storm.

Although substantive portions of trademark license agreements receive most of the attention, as shown in a recent decision of the Delaware Court of Chancery, choice of law provisions, such as those frequently found in the boilerplate of most agreements, should receive careful consideration as well. In Mrs. Fields Brand, Inc. v. Interbake Foods LLC (a copy of which is viewable here), a well-known cookie company, Mrs. Fields as licensor, sought a declaratory judgment that its contract manufacturer, Interbake as licensee, could not terminate their license agreement before the expiration of the then-current term.

Tags: Trademark

The State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy just released its draft dispensary districts. As you’ve probably heard, medical cannabis is roughly a year away from becoming reality in Ohio, and this step provides some initial insight into where a patient might be able to obtain medical cannabis with a physician’s prescription.

Although about half of the states have legalized medical marijuana, and the department of justice has declared it to be a low enforcement priority, marijuana is still a controlled substance under federal law, with criminal penalties for possession and sale.

Ohio’s Department of Commerce is ramping up efforts to begin the state’s medical marijuana program.  Standards and licensing procedures for cultivators, laboratories, dispensaries and others will be set up over the next year, and the program must be fully up and running by the summer of 2018.  But at the same time, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) is doubling down on the marijuana ban, keeping the drug listed alongside heroin as a top-level controlled substance.

An exploding craft beer industry has led to an uptick in lawsuits about beer names and labels.  Craft beer lovers do not always appreciate the lawsuits.  But what do the federal courts think about them?

This morning, we awoke to the news that the U.K. has voted to exit the European Union. Our first thought was whether this vote, and the expected unwinding of the U.K. from the European legal system, will have any impact on our clients’ European intellectual property rights in the U.K.

With President Obama’s signing of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) on May 11, 2016,  federal intellectual property law has expanded to include trade secrets, which had previously been governed exclusively by state law. Although the text of the DTSA is largely consistent with the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), the law which 48 states have adopted in some form to protect trade secrets, this new law contains several features which will provide expanded protection to trade secret owners.

So apparently, Netflix is good for something other than just House of Cards.  In an eagerly-awaiting ruling Wednesday, the SEC issued a report confirming that companies are permitted to disseminate material information through their social media channels in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (“Regulation FD”) so long as investors know that companies are going to do so. 

Today in Singapore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted to allow registrations of brand-specific generic top level domains, or gTLDs as they’re known.  No more will internet addresses be limited to the familiar “.com” and “.net” suffixes. 

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