Trademark law can intersect with many other areas of practice. Check out the topics below to learn more. Don't see what you're looking for? Search Search Center, the Biddle Law Library's online catalog, to find more print and electronic sources.
Trade secrets are broadly defined as any piece of information (which may be embodied in a physical object) used in business and providing an opportunity to gain competitive advantage over others who do not possess the information. Trade secrets are generally governed by state law, and most states have adopted some version of the American Law Institute's Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (Pub. L. 114–153, 130 Stat. 376) also provides a private right of action for trade secret misappropriation.
The following resources offer a starting point for trade secret research.
Unfair competition is primarily a common law tort, only partially codified in state statutes. There is no universal definition for what constitutes "unfair competition," but it is often illustrated by examples of unlawful conduct, including trademark infringement or dilution, use of confusingly similar business or corporate names, misappropriation of business values, "bait and switch" sales techniques, below-cost selling, false advertising, theft of trade secrets, bad faith assertions of other intellectual property rights, and more.
The Right of Publicity refers to the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her identity, and is governed by state law. It incorporates legal concepts related to the right of privacy, defamation, trademark, false advertising and misappropriation. The right of publicity has evolved through case law, and was addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1977 case, Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 564 (1977). While a majority of states recognize some right of individuals to recover damages for the appropriation of their identities, fewer than half of states have codified these rights.
The Right of Publicity by
Who controls how one's identity is used by others? This legal question, centuries old, demands greater scrutiny in the Internet age. Jennifer Rothman uses the right of publicity?a little-known law, often wielded by celebrities?to answer that question, not just for the famous but for everyone. In challenging the conventional story of the right of publicity's emergence, development, and justifications, Rothman shows how it transformed people into intellectual property, leading to a bizarre world in which you can lose ownership of your own identity. This shift and the right's subsequent expansion undermine individual liberty and privacy, restrict free speech, and suppress artistic works. The Right of Publicity traces the right's origins back to the emergence of the right of privacy in the late 1800s. The central impetus for the adoption of privacy laws was to protect people from ?wrongful publicity.? This privacy-based protection was not limited to anonymous private citizens but applied to famous actors, athletes, and politicians. Beginning in the 1950s, the right transformed into a fully transferable intellectual property right, generating a host of legal disputes, from control of dead celebrities like Prince, to the use of student athletes' images by the NCAA, to lawsuits by users of Facebook and victims of revenge porn. The right of publicity has lost its way. Rothman proposes returning the right to its origins and in the process reclaiming privacy for a public world.
Right of Publicity in a Nutshell by