“AI is the next revolution … there is no going back.”
— M. Werneck, executive vice president, The Kraft Heinz Company.
Not all revolutions benefit humanity. Tech luminaries Elon Musk and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio recently warned we might be circling the drain. They, and others, have called for a six-month moratorium on training artificial intelligence systems more powerful than Microsoft’s GPT-4. They caution AI can be dangerous to society in ways not understood.
Kaitlin Corey has been appointed to the Intelligent Transportation Society of Maryland (ITS Maryland) Board of Directors as a Special Advisor.
A partner at Goodell DeVries, Kaitlin represents a wide range of clients in intellectual property law and litigation and estate and tax law. Her practice spans everything from trademark litigation to multimillion-dollar business transactions and tax controversy work.
Kaitlin speaks regularly on copyright and trademark law and is an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she teaches Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law as well as Current Developments in Intellectual Property Law.
She is a past Chair of the Maryland State Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section and a current Co-Chair of the MSBA’s Young Lawyers Section Education Committee. Kaitlin is also Co-Chair of the American Advertising Federation Baltimore’s Legislative Committee and a Board Member and Board Secretary with the Northeastern Maryland Technology Council (NMTC).
In the first trial involving non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, trademark rights and a First Amendment defense, a jury in New York City earlier this month found an artist had violated the trademark rights of Hermés, the iconic French fashion house.
At issue was the artist’s NFT depictions of Hermés’ Birkin bags and his use of the BIRKIN mark in connection with his art. NFTs are digital depictions of art that reside not on walls or shelves of collectors but in the cloud, accessible via the owner’s computer.
It’s the rare celebrity, whether sports or Hollywood, who has not acted as an advertiser’s spokesperson, or even as an endorser. The deals run from Jimmy Walker hawking Medicare insurance on late night TV to William Shatner, who made $13 million to promote Priceline. That’s not bad money for a few hours on the sound stage every year. Rapper Travis Scott is said to have made $20 million promoting McDonald’s on social media.
Not all of these deals pass legal muster, however, and when a celebrity endorses a product in his field of interest, such as a celebrity racecar driver pushing tires, the public has a right to believe the celebrity means what he says and actually uses the product. Where it is obvious the actor, or celebrity, is merely being paid to act as a spokesperson, product use is not needed. And, when the celebrity is given something of value to add an endorsement, disclosure is required. If these rules are not followed, the result may be a claim by a state attorney general, the FTC, or group of consumers that the celebrity endorser engaged in deceptive trade practices. Continue reading
Decades back when we first represented advertising agencies, the proliferation of titles involved executive vice presidents, senior vice presidents, vice presidents…well, you get the point. Someone once quipped “hand out titles, not raises.” Today, new positions abound in agencies. There are creative directors, chief experience officers, strategy officers, branding directors, and chief marketing officers. The latest misery to befall the maker of M&M candies evidences the need for a strategy king (or queen) in charge of sensitivity. Continue reading
Jim Astrachan was tapped for his take on the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act in a news article on Technical.ly.
Here’s an excerpt:
Intellectual property lawyer James Astrachan of downtown Baltimore’s Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann sees a mix of positives and major concerns with the new bill. He specifically cited the bill’s seemingly incomplete definition of what it purports to protect.
“I’m looking at the bill, and I don’t see that the bill even defines the term ‘trade secrets,’” said Astrachan, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. “That throws up in the air a lot of discretion to whoever is compiling this list of offenders for the president.”
Astrachan also believes companies are likely to report theft unless the act of doing so results in losing control of that trade secret. To that end, he is actually getting ready to file a trade secret action for a client.
“We’ll be very vague in our complaint in terms of identifying [the trade secret],” he explained. “We’ll try to work out some sort of protection so that it’s going to be under seal. Nobody can read it in the court records.”
He also noted how the terms “knowingly,” “secretly,” and “theft” remained undefined in the act, which could be problematic.
“You wonder whether in operation, this bill has been so watered down that the teeth are, ‘I’ll bite if I want to bite,’ he said.
Read the full article here: A new law aims to protect US IP from international theft. Here’s what that means for founders
By Jim Astrachan and Kaitlin Corey
The bipartisan Protecting American Intellectual Property Act was passed by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and sent on to President Biden for signature. Although the bill proclaims to protect intellectual property, its aim is the protection of trade secrets. Maybe. And likely there is a real back story to why this piece of legislative sausage came out of the sausage stuffer the way it did. Continue reading
The FTC claims its latest effort to promote competition will increase the wages of America’s workers by “nearly $300 billion per year,” but what will this effort do to employers and the sellers of businesses?
The subject of the FTC push is a proposed rule that would ban the use of non-compete clauses except where they are imposed, with limitations, on the sellers of a business. The FTC seeks public comment through March 6 on its January 5, 2023, proposed rule. The rule was “encouraged” by President Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order promoting competition. In it, he encouraged the FTC to use its authority under the Federal Trade Commission Act to curtail what he called the unfair use of non-competition clauses and other agreements that may “unfairly limit” worker mobility. Continue reading