Balough
June 8, 2017
(May 11, 2017) As autonomous and driverless vehicles take to the roads, drivers, car manufactures, programmers, and insurance companies will face new legal challenges, said Richard C. Balough in a presentation at the 2017 Intellectual Property Litigation Seminar sponsored by DRI. “Because today’s and tomorrow’s cars are computers that happen to move physically on the roadway, […]
Balough
May 18, 2017
(May 18, 2017) Even though the public may use “google” in a generic sense with regards to internet search engines, that fact alone does not suffice to cancel Google’s trademarks. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Google against a party who argued that Google was viewed by the public as generic, thus no longer […]
Balough
May 4, 2017
(May 4, 2017) A text message platform that sends messages only to a set list of numbers may be an “autodialer” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the Seventh Circuit found. However, if the party claiming a violation of the TCPA voluntarily provided their number, then there may be no cause of action. A customer […]
Balough
May 4, 2017
(May 4, 2017) The Hatchery, a food business incubator in Chicago, hosted Cheryl Balough on April 20, 2017 for a presentation on “Trademarks & Trade Secrets: Protecting Special Features in Your Food Business.” Ms. Balough shared guidelines for selecting trademarks, reviewed the trademark clearance and registration process, and discussed the intersection of trademarks and domain […]
Balough
March 24, 2017
(March 25, 2017) Fashion designers might be able to stitch together copyright protection for their clothing thanks to the Supreme Court. In a divided decision, the Supreme Court granted copyright protection to cheerleading uniforms because the chevrons, curves, stripes, angles, diagonals, and shapes are conceptually separate from the “utilitarian function” of the uniform. This result […]
Balough
March 20, 2017
(March 20, 2017) The comma may be a small punctuation mark but its presence, or absence, can have a huge impact, as shown in an overtime dispute involving delivery drivers and a dairy. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit devoted 17 pages of a 29-page opinion to discussing the lack of a […]
Balough
February 11, 2017
(January 28, 2017) Richard C. Balough explored whether inventions and works created by artificial intelligence without human intervention may be patented or copyrighted under existing laws. His presentation, Artificial Intelligence – Who Owns the Machine’s IP, was made at the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Institute and Winter Working Meeting on January 28, 2017.
Balough
January 3, 2017
(January 3, 2017) The Joint Analysis Report on the Russian cyber activity in the recent election also serves as a warning to others of the need to implement best cybersecurity practices to protect computer systems. The report by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found activity by Russian […]
Balough
December 14, 2016
(December 15, 2016) The website designed to help adults have discrete affairs agreed to settle charges concerning its lack of adequate data security that exposed 36 million of its accounts to hackers in 2015. AshleyMadison.com and its operating companies settled charges that they deceived consumers by claiming their data was secure and, that if they […]
Balough
December 14, 2016
(December 14, 2016) Ransomware attacks continued to accelerate in 2016, both in terms of attacks and the variety of programs, a new report says. From January to the end of September, attacks on businesses increased threefold from one every 2 minutes to one every 40 seconds. For individuals, attacks increased to one every 10 seconds […]
