Today an lawyer, Anthony Biller, Esq., a Member of the law firm of, Coats and Bennett, has been appointed to chair the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Committee on Trademark Litigation.
According to the press release Mr. Biller in his roll as chairman of ABA committee is concerned with several issues including:
“The potential expansion of domain name infringement, or “cybersquatting”, that may occur with the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).”
Moreover Mr. Biller states:
““Over the next year, the committee will study and perhaps sponsor ABA policy positions on other critical trademark issues like whether the ‘initial interest confusion’ doctrine – when a consumer is initially misled but realizes the mistake prior to purchase – should be applied in Internet trademark infringement cases,”
“Additionally, the committee will likely examine whether the purchasing of adwords constitutes ‘trademark use’ for purposes of infringement under federal trademark laws.”
It should be noted by all, that all of the issues that the new chairman of the trademark committee raised, are online intellectual property issues, rather than more traditional offline trademark infringement. which means you should expect this area of the lawyer to be even more litigious in coming years as more attention is about to be focused on online trademark issues.
Mr. Biller leads his firm’s litigation practice, “representing clients nationwide with intellectual property disputes and management issues. Actively involved with the Intellectual Property Law Practice Group of the ABA, he served as chair of the Trademark and Internet Committee for the past two years and will chair Committee 208-Trademark Litigation during the 2009-2010 ABA year.”