The team behind LAW OF FASHION is on a sort of summer research sabbatical (hence the lack of posts over the past several weeks.)

But LOF had to resurface to bring you a new essay, "Trademark Law and the Prickly Ambivalence of Post-Parodies" (analyzing fashion designs of the sort pictured below), slated to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online this August.  You can download the most recent working draft of the piece at the Social Science Research Network.  Feedback -- and sharing with friends and colleagues, especially those of the law-school appointments-committee-member variety -- always welcome!

A Polish law student, Anna Radke, asked me some questions a while back; the interview was recently posted online, but my answers appeared in Polish.  Because Google Translate utterly butchered my responses, I decided to post a revised/supplemented version of the original Q&A here...

How did you begin your career? I'd love to hear about your educational background, training, internships, work experience, etc.

Available on Amazon as of today (where you can flip through selected pages -- screenshot of one of mine, below.)  More info on the revised edition available on the publisher's website.

The intro to my chapter...

While I don't have audio to share with you, here is the visual component of the presentation I gave at the Kellogg Center on the campus of Michigan State University this past Monday, March 24th.  (I've made some revisions, including the addition of explanatory text where lack of a verbal explanation would make the presentation difficult to follow.  For a full-size version of the slideshow, go to Scribd; to download the presentation, go to SSRN.)

Thanks so much to ICLE and the Michigan State Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section for the invitation to present!  Slideshow after the jump...

This writer has represented various jewelry designers whose work has been knocked off by others, so I know a thing or two about the problem. JCK Magazine, the leading trade publication for the jewelry industry, sought out my advice for its March 2014 issue, which contains an informative article entitled "Clone Wars":

The full text of the article also appears on the JCK website, under the alternative title "How Retailers and Designers Can Guard Against Knockoffs." The piece contains a list of cautionary bullet points, which the article's writer boiled down from our Q&A on the topic of knockoffs:

Secondary meaning?

I think not...