Section Newsletters

Articles From Shannon A.R. Bond

Fifty shades of counsel: Fan fiction in 2012 By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, December 2012 Fan fiction—sincere flattery or copyright infringement. Stephanie Meyer's Master of the Universe, E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey, and avoiding trouble.
Trust me By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, September 2011 “Trust me” is a phrase that often presages disaster. Many times, when trust is involved in contractual agreements, the family that does business together winds up in court together. Eva’s Bridal Ltd. discovered that the hard way when a naked trademark license got between trusting family members and the failure to hash out all the details resulted in a loss of trademark protection. Similarly, trusting property buyers lost millions and learned the importance of reading all the terms of an agreement after realizing that the Trump name had been merely licensed to the property developers.
The break up By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, April 2011 This past August, Starbucks offered $750 million to Kraft in an attempt to “break up” with the distributor and exercise more control over the Starbucks retail products. Reports conflict about whether Starbucks’ decision was foreseeable or completely unexpected, and there are a lot of allegations about who caused the break up.
7th Circuit’s trade dress regrets By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, October 2010 Attorneys should keep the Jay Franco & Sons, Inc. v. Clemens Franek case in mind when approached by a client about protecting product design trade dress.
Don’t let pharmaceutical product trademarks be a pain By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, March 2010 The process involved in filing a trademark registration for a pharmaceutical product.
Three tips to protect a trademark By Shannon A.R. Bond Intellectual Property, September 2009 Colgate-Palmolive Co. is the well-known owner of multiple Colgate Total trademarks for oral-care products. To protect its trademark rights, on July 31, 2009, Colgate filed two separate lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and Chattem, Inc., demanding the companies withdraw trademark applications for Johnson & Johnson’s Listerine Total Care mouthwash and Chattem’s Act Total Care mouthwash and stop using the Total name.  

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