The counterfeit industry is big business. It is estimated that more than $3 trillion of counterfeit merchandise is sold annually. In merchandising, most counterfeiters focus on fashion and luxury products, such as clothing, shoes, leather items, electronic products, and watches,…
The licensing industry has matured over the past few decades, evolving from the early years when a license was frequently concluded over lunch and relationships were paramount. Over the years, two precepts have driven the industry. Licensors were responsible for…
A Pennsylvania federal jury, in a landmark case entitled THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, Plaintiff, v. VINTAGE BRAND, LLC; SPORTSWEAR, INC., d/b/a PREP SPORTSWEAR; CHAD HARTVIGSON; ERIKHARTVIGSON; and MICHELLE YOUNG (M.D.Pa. 2024), found that Penn State was able to enforce its…
Licensing intellectual property rights, e.g., patents, trademarks, copyrights, technology, know-how, software, merchandising properties, etc., is big business. It has been reported that the U.S. market alone was valued at $65.5 billion in 2023 in royalty revenues, up more than $20…
Generative Artificial Intelligence (“Generative AI”) programs, such Open AI’s DALL-E and ChatGPT, can generate outputs in the form of new images, texts, etc., in response to a user’s inputs. Outputs are accomplished by exposing the input to vast quantities of…
While many property owners look to the trademark laws to protect their merchandising properties, they should also consider protection under the Copyright laws of their home country. Copyright protection covers any original works of authorship and typically includes the following:…
While compensation provisions in license agreements can vary greatly, the most common form of compensation is a “royalty” paid by the licensee based on its “Net Sales” of licensed products. In addition, in most instances, the licensor will require that…
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU regulation on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area. It was approved by the EU Parliament in 2016 and enforced on May…
Since licensors will typically draft merchandising license agreements, they tend to slant them in their favor. That is why they consider it important to “control the form.” While licensors typically discourage a licensee from making changes to their form agreements,…