Articles/News
Donahue Fitzgerald Attorneys Recognized in the Best Lawyers in America® 2016 Edition
OAKLAND (August 28, 2015) – Three attorneys from Donahue Fitzgerald were recognized in the 2016 edition of Best Lawyers in America®: Dawn Newton, Franchise Law Kristin A. Pace, Tax Law Merrill J. Schwartz, Corporate Law The Best Lawyers in America rankings are based solely on peer-review surveys in which tens of thousands of attorneys confidentially evaluate […]
Watermark Women Like Us- May 5, 2016
Wednesday, May 5 was the inaugural Watermark Women Like Us (WLU) networking event in the East Bay. With almost 40 professional women from Berkeley, Oakland, Pleasanton, Walnut Creek and other East Bay cities attending, the event was a huge success. “Watermark already had WLU events across the Bay Area in San Francisco, South Bay and […]
2015 California Employment Legislation Update
Fortunately, unlike 2013 (when the Legislature increased the state’s minimum wage) and 2014 (when it enacted the paid sick leave law), the majority of employment-related bills enacted in 2015—the most important of which are summarized below—were aimed at clarifying or amending existing laws. Except for AB 1506 and AB 304, both of which were enacted […]
Copyright Registration
The importance of registering creative works with the U.S. Copyright Office cannot be overstated. Registration generally is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement, and copyright holders may only recover federally prescribed statutory damages and recovery of full costs, including attorney’s fees, if registration occurs within established time frames. Those statutory damages range […]
A Smoking Gun in the Case of Who Owns ‘Happy Birthday to You’
KQED’s Cy Musiker interviews Donahue Fitzgerald attorney Daniel Schacht and his client, Rupa Marya, about the Happy Birthday To You class action lawsuit. Schacht explains the copyright issues of the Happy Birthday To You class action lawsuit, which has captured the world’s attention. In the interview he points to a songbook published in the early […]
Why Louboutin Matters: What Red Soles Teach Us About the Strategy of Trade Dress Protection
When Yves Saint Laurent created an overall red women’s high heeled shoe with red uppers, red platform heels and red soles, to Louboutin this was trademark infringement and the retailer sought to enforce its trademark in U.S. and European courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found the brand’s trademark consisted in […]
Who’s Using Your Parked Domain?
If your business is a typical one, you probably own many iterations of your trade name as domain names. For example, you may own ABC Company, so you bought “abc-company.com” and “abc-company.biz” as well as “abc-company.net” and “abc-company.info”. Or you might have purchased domains filled with different punctuation or even typos, to ensure that no […]
Urban Legends of Copyright Law
Do you believe that if you just mail yourself a copy of the character you created you will receive complete copyright protection under federal law and the international treaties to which the U.S. belongs? Or that if you would like to use some music to go with your animation, you can use any song you’ve […]
Trademark Owners Can Block the Adult Entertainment Industry’s Use of Their Marks as Domain Names
Only individuals and businesses operating in or serving the adult entertainment industry will be permitted to register .XXX domains. However, many non-adult oriented businesses have expressed concern about the possibility of members of this sponsored community registering their trademarks in the triple-X domain, resulting in a new domain of trademark.xxx. In order to address this […]
Pop Music and the Wonky World of Webcasting
Coinciding with this pop music trend, and highlighting the legal distinction between online music services, the federal Copyright Royalty Board (a three member federal judge panel, the “CRB”) released the full text of its webcasting determination in February 2016, which establishes new rates that non-interactive webcasters like Pandora must pay to stream songs over the […]