Recent Articles

Employee Preston accepted employment at Marathon Oil Company under a written contract with an express “at-will” term of employment. After Preston began employment, Marathon asked Preston to sign a separate written employment agreement that, among other things, assigned to Marathon all “Intellectual Property” defined in the agreement to mean “all inventions, discoveries, developments, writings,…

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American Home Realty Network (“AHRN”), based in California, operates a website that displays photos of residential home for sale and that facilitates real estate agent referrals and home sales. Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (“MRIS”), based in Maryland. MRIS facilitates real estate transactions in the mid-Atlantic region by operating and maintaining an automated database consisting…

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Rosetta Stone, Ltd. sells language-learning software.  Google, Inc. operates a web-based search engine and sells keywords as part of its AdWords advertising program.  Google’s AdWords policy allowed advertisers to use a competitor’s trademark as a keyword in its AdWords advertisements.  Because many counterfeit versions of Rosetta Stone’s software were being advertised and sold via Google’s…

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Seller signed a written exclusive right of sale listing agreement to sell his restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The seller was presented with an offer that the seller signed but only after the broker inserted the following clause: “Contingent upon seller’s attorney’s approval of all documents.” Seller’s attorney refused to approve the documents based on several reasonable grounds.  T…

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Anderson Adventures, LLC (“Anderson”) executed an Asset Purchase Agreement with Sam & Murphy, Inc. (“Sam”) by which Anderson was to purchase the assets of Sam’s restaurant known as Fins. As part of the transaction, a principal of Anderson also signed, in his personal capacity, a Restaurant Management Agreement with Sam. The two agreements had separate provisions concerning responsibility for…

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Kernal Records Oy sued Timothy Z. Mosley and others claiming copyright infringement. The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment to have the claims dismissed and the trial court granted defendant’s motion. The Eleventh Circuit Court determined that the trial court improperly granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment; however, after reviewing the record and determining that ther…

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Miller’s Ale House, Inc. (“Miller”) sued Boynton Carolina Ale House, Inc. (“Boynton”) alleging Boynton infringed Miller’s common law “Ale House” trademark, trade dress in its restaurant decor, and copyrights in its floor plan. With respect to Miller’s claimed “Ale House” trademark, the court found that it was not distinctive based on a prior court decision eleven years earlier finding the words…

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The Ninth Circuit applied the State of Washington’s long-arm statute, written to extend personal jurisdiction over a defendant to the fullest extent permitted by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to affirm personal jurisdiction over a defendant located in Arkansas. The complaint alleged facts that the defendant, an Arkansas retailer, committed an intentional act (selling boots…

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What happens will in large part depend on the facts and circumstances of your specific situation. What can happen is that a court may not recognize your agreement as being an enforceable contract. If you do not have your agreement in writing, then you will have to rely on corroborating evidence to prove that you have a contract. Another possibility is that you may not obtain all the benefits of…

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In the United States, the general rule is that the person or persons who author an original work own the copyright in that work.  There are exceptions to this rule, and it can be altered by written agreement.  Your company owns the original works of authorship that are created by your company’s employees while the employees are working within the scope of their employment.  For example, if…

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