Jim Astrachan to Lead Baltimore Bar Foundation and Ethics Committee

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Jim Astrachan - Intellectual Property Lawyer

Goodell DeVries partner and intellectual property lawyer Jim Astrachan has been appointed to two leadership roles this month. He was named President of the Baltimore City Bar Foundation and will serve a one-year term. 

Jim was also appointed Chair of the Bar Association of Baltimore City’s Professional Ethics Committee, a role in which he will serve until May 2023. 

Jim represents clients in intellectual property law and litigation, mediation, and business, regulatory, and transactional matters. He is a Life Fellow of the Baltimore City Bar Foundation, the Maryland Bar Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation. He has been an adjunct professor since 1979, teaching IP courses at the University of Maryland and University of Baltimore Schools of Law and University of Baltimore Graduate School of Communications Design, and taxation subjects at Loyola’s Sellinger School of Business.

An Award of Statutory Damages Under the Copyright Act for Post-Registration Infringements? It Depends.

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Goodell DeVries partner Jim Astrachan published this article in the Drake Law Review. Full text is available here.

ABSTRACT

In many cases of copyright infringement, the plaintiff is only able to afford to bring an action for infringement if they are entitled to ask the court to award statutory damages and attorney’s fees should they prevail in establishing infringement. While there might be a connection between the amount of statutory damages a court may award, in its discretion, the profits of the infringer and the actual damages, if any, suffered by a copyright owner, 17 U.S.C. § 504(c) allows a court to award between $750 and $150,000 for each work infringed.1 The statute does not require the plaintiff to establish what actual damages they may have suffered from the infringement or what profits the defendant reaped.2

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Commoners in the Land of Trademarks

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One of the British tabloids has taken Meghan Markle to task because she wants to trademark “archetypes” for use in conjunction with her Spotify podcast. The tabloid defiantly asserts archetypes is 470 years old. So? They write she should not be entitled to own this word. She is, however, entitled to grab a word from the dictionary and use it as a trademark to the exclusion, in category, of anyone else’s use.

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Rejection of a Trademark License in Bankruptcy Does Not Terminate the Licensee’s Right to Use the Trademark

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On May 20, 2019, the Supreme Court answered the longstanding question of what happens to a licensee’s right to use a trademark under a license agreement if a bankrupt licensor rejects the license agreement. The Court held that a licensor’s ability to reject a license agreement does not extinguish licensee’s rights under the trademark license and therefore, the licensee may continue to use the trademark under the terms of the license agreement. Continue reading →

Registration is Required Before Suing for Copyright Infringement

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The United States Supreme Court held in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp v. Wallstreet.com, LLC, that the Copyright Office must either issue a (1) copyright registration certificate or (2) refuse to register a copyright before a copyright owner can sue for copyright infringement.

Prior to this decision, there was a split among the circuits concerning the interpretation of the first sentence of Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act which states, “no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.”

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