Heitner Legal
Defensive end Myles Garrett ripped quarterback Mason Rudolph’s helmet off of his head and swung it at him near the end of a Thursday Night Football matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns. After the game, Garrett admitted to his wrongful action, stating, “I lost my cool and regret it. It’s going to come […]
October 29, 2019 will either be remembered as the day that the NCAA signified a major shift in its position on whether college athletes should receive compensation in exchange for the commercial use of their names, images and likenesses, or it won’t. The bottom-line is that it is far too early to tell what the […]
NFL players have reportedly been recently entering into Income Purchase Agreements, which are contracts that involve an up-front payment by a third party to a player in exchange for the player promising the third party a percentage of his current and future NFL contracts. The NFL Players Association caught wind of these Income Purchase Agreements […]
Everyone should have general counsel on a retainer. Certainly, as a lawyer who stands to benefit from same, I am biased. But I also have a unique perspective, working for roughly 10 years with a variety of individuals and business as their legal counsel. What I have learned during that time is that, 99% of […]
When you are threatened with litigation, whether it be in the realm of intellectual property or otherwise, you don’t need to sit around waiting and wondering if/when an action will be filed against you. Instead, there is a type of action called a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment that allows you to go on offense, essentially […]
On October 22, 2019, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (the CASE Act), was approved by a 410-6 vote in the House of Representatives. The intention of the Act is to establish a small claims court for content creators to more easily take legal action against alleged infringers.
Eric Smith says he was falsely identified as the Cleveland Browns fan who threw his beer on Tennessee Titans player Logan Ryan during the Browns home opener on September 8, and now he is filed a lawsuit seeking relief. On October 14, Smith and wife Antinuch Naowarat filed a Complaint in the Court of Common […]
Carlton Ridenhour, better known as the rapper Chuck D., who founded hip-hop group Public Enemy, has filed a Complaint for declaratory relief regarding the ownership of copyrights, as well as causes of action for fraud and conversion against Michael Closter and Closter’s fully owned Reach Global, Inc. He claims that the defendants used false copyright […]
Is “The Vitamin Shoppe” too generic of a name for the parent company to obtain trademark registration? After a year-long battle within the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) system, the answer is a resounding yes. Without a disclaimer for the entire mark, the TTAB was unwilling to reverse the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s […]
Is the word “RIOT” now so attached to the company Riot Games that no other company can use the word in its name? Riot Games seems to think so based on its recent initiation of a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.