#Cockygate, Take Two: This Time It’s Judicial (UPDATED #2)

As usual: I am an attorney, but nothing herein should be viewed as legal advice. I am writing on the basis of both known facts and allegations, and if those allegations are changed or proven incorrect my analysis would likely change as well. You should consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction and familiar with the relevant law before making legal decisions.

5/30/18: Click here to go to the update at the end of this post.

6/1/18: Click here to go to the update at the end of this post.

Faleena Hopkins, the protagonist (or antagonist, depending on your POV) of the “Cockygate” saga, which I addressed in this post, has taken her grievances to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. (That’s the Federal District Court that covers New York City and its environs.) She has sued:

  1. Kevin Kneupper, the attorney who filed a Petition to Cancel her trademark registration for “COCKY”.
  2. Tara Crescent, an author who has published romance novels incorporating the word “Cocky” in their titles.
  3. Jennifer Watson, a publicist participating in the promotion of an anthology called “Cocktales” specifically set up to raise funds to help people who have incurred legal expenses related to the “COCKY” mark and similar sorts of marks. NOTE: Multiple persons have alleged that Ms. Watson was not involved in the creation and publication of the anthology, as I originally stated. Assuming they are correct, I regret the error.

The plaintiff has asked for a lot of things in her complaint. She wants the court to declare that her mark is valid. She wants a declaratory judgment that her mark isn’t infringing any mark of the defendants, or any other right of theirs, and an injunction to stop all the defendants from, essentially, harassing her about her mark and her use of it. She wants the people who are selling allegedly infringing books to stop it and to pay damages to her for doing it. As far as Kneupper, who hasn’t published any allegedly infringing books, she wants the court to order the USPTO to dismiss his Petition to Cancel her registration, with prejudice. (That means he can’t re-file it later, as opposed to a dismissal without prejudice, which means he could correct it and try again.) And, finally, she wants attorney’s fees from everybody.

Continue reading #Cockygate, Take Two: This Time It’s Judicial (UPDATED #2)

Anime Central 2018!

I moderated my first Anime Central panel yesterday. It was a variant on a panel I’ve done before, which I call “GeekLaw: Law, Pop Culture and Creativity.” I managed to spend most of the day at the con, so I thought a little recap might be fun. Please note that if you were at the panel and you’re looking for the presentation materials, here they are:

GeekLaw-AnimeCentral2018

I arrived about 11AM and it was touch and go whether I’d even get a parking space. The convention center’s lot was so full it was blocked off already. Fortunately the Hyatt still had a few spaces (the convention is held at the Rosemont Convention Center, which is physically attached to the Hyatt hotel.) Unfortunately, that lot costs a lot more, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

But at least I found a space and was able to make the first panel that had caught my eye, “Scum & Villainy: Why It’s Good to be Bad.” I was under the impression this would be a how-to panel, but it turned out to be how to write about villains. Which was obviously disappointing but it was still a fun panel.

After that I went through Artist’s Alley, which was much better laid out this year than last year – one aisle was still a little tight, but you could get by. I picked up a cute little sketch zine from Lisa Imas (http://hashtag-art.tumblr.com/) called “things i drew when i should have been paying attention, or how i almost failed all my classes.) I got this because it reminded me of the time I almost got thrown out of a class in law school for laughing at the book I was reading when I was supposed to be paying attention. 🙂 I also encountered this retro cosplay:

The next panel I went to was a fan fiction panel. As I sometimes do when fan fiction is discussed, I went to the moderator before the panel and mentioned that I was an intellectual property attorney and that if any questions about legal issues came up, they were welcome to call on me if they didn’t have their own legal expertise.

I’m sure you can tell what happened next.

The question did come up, and the moderator very graciously invited me to stand up and borrow a microphone and talk for a few minutes about the legal issues related to fan fiction. It seemed to be very well received and people commented that it was helpful. I also plugged my own panel, which wasn’t for hours yet but it seemed only fair. So thank you to moderator Pearson Mui (http://www.jurai.net/~pmui/adintro.html) for asking me to speak.

With some time to kill, I headed back to the show floor and scoped out some cheap manga books, as well as running into these two:

In one of the cleverest (and most adorable) mashup cosplays I have seen in a long time, that’s Sailor Ladybug and Tuxedo Noir. (That’s what I call them, anyway.) I had to leave before seeing quite all of the floor because I wanted to attend a panel called “Copyright 101,” put on by Kumate Works. I admit that I went to this to see if the information being presented was reasonable, because while I try not to be obnoxious about it, if I see a presenter giving information that will get somebody sued, I will say something. However, my concerns were completely unnecessary. The presenter knew her stuff and had consulted with an intellectual property attorney to develop her presentation. It was excellent. Once again, I got outed, but once she knew I was an IP attorney I kept my yap shut unless she asked me for confirmation of something. I was very impressed.

Then I had to bolt around the panel room area to get to a paneled identified as “Game Development – The Crash Course.” It was put on by Mark Kakareka of Guilty10Games. Promising to be a “crash course” in the basics of game development, the panel delivered quite well in my opinion. Acknowledging that he couldn’t teach anything of practical substance in 45 minutes, the presenter instead hit the big picture elements – have a plan, write it down, do a design doc, use tools appropriate to your technical skill level – and provided some examples of each. I thought it was about as much as you could ask from a one-hour panel on a topic that you can literally get college degrees in. I got made again when somebody asked a legal question and I volunteered to answer it, but once more I apparently wasn’t too obnoxious and nobody seemed to mind my assistance.

I thought about going to another panel but the show floor had just closed and there were huge lines to pretty much everything, so I took a little break. When it got close to time, I went to the panel room I was in only to find that the panel going on in it was being run by a person I follow on Twitter, @Homura_Bakura. Her enthusiasm and happiness to be talking about something very dear to her was really amazing and while I did come in toward the end, everybody was obviously super happy to be there, so well done. After saying hi while she was on the way out I got set up for the panel.

I was stunned to see that even though we were doing a law education panel at 10:30 on a Saturday night, there were about thirty people waiting to come in. Thank you so much to everyone who chose to use part of their Con Saturday night to be with us! Thanks also to my fantastic co-panelists Sam Castree (http://www.twitter.com/indiegamelawyer) and Diana Qiao (http://www.twitter.com/dianaqiao.) The panel went great, we had wonderful questions, and everybody put up with my rambling far better than I could have expected. (It was a long day.)

Then I went home and passed out.

So thank you again, everybody, and hopefully I’ll see you again soon!

M

Romance Author Gets Unduly Cocky Over Registered Trademark

UPDATE 05/07/18: Reports that Amazon is advising publishers of takedown notices are circulating online. Please note that there are TWO KINDS of takedown notice Amazon can get, and then advise sellers of. The first is a copyright takedown, often referred to as a DMCA Notice (though there are other kinds.) The second is a trademark takedown, often referred to as a Brand Registry takedown (though there are other kinds.) THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. Sending a DMCA counter-notice in response to a trademark takedown will be ineffective. Brand Registry notices can be very difficult to deal with. I recommend anyone who wants to fight one retain an experienced trademark attorney.

FLASH UPDATE: Retired IP litigator and author Kevin Kneupper has filed a Petition for Cancellation of the “COCKY” standard character mark. Link to his filing here: https://twitter.com/kneupperwriter/status/993359859071381505. The petition will now be considered in due course by the Trademark Office. We should not expect to hear anything for a few weeks, and the matter could take months to resolve. But in the meantime the registration stands and the risks remain.

Please Note: As I type, this appears to be a developing situation. The trademark in question was registered literally only three days ago. I have not seen any of the C&D letters people are alleging are going out. Nothing in this post should be taken as legal advice or even as verified fact. This is for general education only.

Also please note that the Romance Writers of America, an industry group, is allegedly also looking into this matter. They will probably provide a centralized response. Author Liliana Hart reports that the RWA requests that people who are contacted by Ms. Hopkins or her attorneys contact Carol Ritter of the RWA at this email: carol.ritter@rwa.org

If you get a cease and desist letter or any other form of legal communication, you may find my “HELP, I JUST GOT A LEGAL THING!” post useful. Click here to read it.

UPDATE: I did not see that the publisher had two trademark registrations, one for the standard character mark, and one for the stylized mark. Post edited accordingly.

Now on with the post.

This evening I started seeing tweets like this one:

Continue reading Romance Author Gets Unduly Cocky Over Registered Trademark