Keep it Legal Blog

What do people in the DeFi and cryptocurrency space need to know about trademarks? I’ve written about cryptocurrency and related topics before: see Trademarks and the Blockchain (2018) and NFTs and Copyright Law (2021). Even people who have been skeptical about cryptocurrency are beginning to identify use cases. For example, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote in Bloomberg: “After many years of doubt and uncertainty, a killer app has finally been found.” Cowen goes on: The core use case for crypto is called DeFi, a recently coined abbreviation for “decentralized finance.” DeFi doesn’t have a formal definition, but it…

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“Goodwill” (or “good will”, it’s written both ways) refers to a consumer’s positive opinion of a product or service and their willingness to purchase it again in the future or to refer it to a friend or colleague. If you like Starbucks coffee, the product can be said to have goodwill. Goodwill and trademarks are inseparable. This is a legal fact: the Lanham Act, which is the Federal law that governs trademarks, states that a trademark can only be sold or transferred (“assigned”) “with the good will of the business in which the mark is used, or with that part…

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The Consolidated Appropriations Act, also known as the coronavirus relief or stimulus, is a massive package of new federal laws that were passed by Congress and signed by the President on December 27, 2020. Included in the Act is a substantial update to U.S. trademark law, the “Trademark Modernization Act of 2020” or the “TM Act of 2020”. It’s a trademark law so nice, they named it twice. The TM Act of 2020 does a few things. It provides opportunities, short of a costly litigation process, to attack false trademark applications and registrations for marks that are not actually being…

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