Out With The Old, In With The Gatsby Sequels: Trademark and Copyright News for the New Year

Most of us had been thrilled to see the calendar flip to 2021 on January 1, closing the chapter on what was an very hard calendar year all around the world. Now that we are a thirty day period into the new calendar year, and the fireworks have light and the noisemakers are packed away, we get a moment to highlight a few noteworthy developments in the IP world that created a rather quieter entrance on the scene when the clock struck midnight.

• Brexit Clones: As of January 1, 2021, the United Kingdom is no more time a aspect of the European Union. While Brexit made lots of queries and dilemmas that took several years to type out, for trademark attorneys the most important problem was constantly: “What will develop into of British isles security for EU trademark registrations?” We are happy to report that the promised smooth changeover has certainly come to go: As of January 1, every valid EU trademark registration has spawned a British isles “clone” with the identical scope of security and very same priority day, preserving the owner’s existing legal rights in the Uk. Trademark proprietors need to just take treatment to update their dockets to include these new registrations (which may well often copy British isles registrations filed during the several years of Brexit uncertainty). In the meantime, entrepreneurs of EU apps that ended up nonetheless pending on January 1 do not reward from automated cloning they have right until September 30, 2021 to apply for a corresponding British isles registration with the exact same priority day.
• USPTO Fee Increases: The new calendar year also brought selected improves in key USPTO submitting service fees (technically helpful on January 2, so all those New Year’s Working day getaway filings made it just less than the wire). Filing a common digital application now prices $350 for every class, rather than $275. The fee to file a Section 8 or 71 Declaration of Use to maintain an issued registration has elevated from $125 to $225 per course, and there is a new $250 fee to delete products or companies from a registration just after submitting a Declaration of Use but just before it is accepted (presumably to persuade house owners to double-test that the mark is in use on all identified items and services right before filing the declaration). As for Trademark Demo and Charm Board proceedings, an opposition or petition to cancel is $600 for every course, up from $400, and there are also higher expenses for extensions of time to oppose. There are even manufacturer-new charges for requesting an oral listening to ($500) and for submitting an charm transient in an ex parte attractiveness ($200 for each class). The information powering these increases seems to be: do not get up the TTAB’s time unless you really imply it. Even though the greater charges may possibly be disheartening for trademark filers, we are gratified to see that the Trademark Business seems to be setting its fees with an eye not only toward covering its charges, but also toward aligning incentives to provide substantive insurance policies and performance.
• New Copyrighted Will work Enter the General public Domain: In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act included 20 yrs to the expression of copyright safety for pre-1976 performs, and paused the yearly expiration of copyright on older performs for 20 years. In 2019, that extension ran out, and 95-12 months-aged operates from the 1920s commenced to enter the community area each and every January. In 2021, we have arrived at the instant of no cost entry to operates posted in 1925, the midpoint of the Roaring Twenties. This yr brought us Ernest Hemingway’s initially e book, In Our Time, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the debut of The New Yorker magazine, and, of training course, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Wonderful Gatsby, alongside with its legendary address. The Framers, of course, appreciated that wonderful artwork generally builds on what arrived prior to it, and wisely sought “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for minimal situations to authors . . . the distinctive ideal to their respective writings.” Making great on this assure of development, in mild of Gatsby’s new availability as derivative do the job supply material, my colleague Joshua Jarvis has requested me to announce his forthcoming novel, The Good Gatsby and the Water Kelpies, in which “Jay is rescued from the pool and healed by a condition-shifting spirit, and they travel by way of underwater passage, with a brief quit in Atlantis (the natural way), to Scotland, wherever they interact in various adventures (and humorous misadventures!).” Glimpse for it before long at your preferred unbiased bookstore!