If such a shoe exists, the parties have not pointed to it, there is no evidence that Already has dreamt of it, and we cannot conceive of it. It sits, as far as we can tell, on a shelf between Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Perseus’s winged sandals.
– Chief Justice John Roberts, remarking in a recent opinion on the specific degree of fabulosity that would be required for Nike to renege on its covenant not to sue Already LLC for trademark infringement. The Supreme Court opinion can be found here.
Today, we wake up in a world where LeBron James is king. The best player in basketball and the Miami Heat closed out Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Congratulations. Waking up to the reign of King James must be like living in Westeros in a world where Joffrey Baratheon is king. (That makes Dwyane Wade Cersei & Chris Bosh Lancel Lannister.)
Kevin Durant will be back. The supremely talented NBA scoring champion will get better from this, and I think he’ll win championships. On the basketball court.
In a court of law, Durant might not be as successful. Durant’s being sued for trademark infringement, and not by George Gervin. Many have compared Durant’s game to Gervin’s, but in terms of nicknames there is no contest. George Gervin was called the “Iceman,” because nicknames used to be cool and creative. Durant is often called simply “KD,” because younger sports fans don’t seem to know the difference between a nickname and an acronym.
Sometimes Durant is called “Durantula” because of his spindly length. That’s more of a word play than a nickname — and apparently it’s already taken. An 80s guitarist that you probably have never heard of claims that he trademarked the moniker “Durantula” years ago. Mark Durante is now suing Durant, his representatives, and Nike.
And the Durantula guitarist kind of has a point…
Continue reading “‘Durantula’ Infringement Suit Against Kevin Durant May Have Legs”
Tim Tebow
* Well, at least somebody’s getting a spring bonus. A Biglaw firm has folded against the EEOC’s will on the de-equitization of partners. And all of the underpaid old farts at Kelley Drye & Warren rejoiced! [Bloomberg]
* Jets fans, are you ready for some football? That’s too bad, because no amount of Tebowing could have saved Reebok from settling this Nike suit. You’re going to have to wait for your damn jerseys. [WSJ Law Blog]
* George Zimmerman’s lawyers, Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig, have dumped him as a client. They’re probably just pissed that the “defense fund” he set up wasn’t linked to their PayPal account. [Miami Herald]
* Marrying a terminally ill client who’s as old as dirt may seem like a great way to make some quick cash, but it’s more likely that you’ll just be disbarred. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* When you’ve been late to court so many times that a judge calls your behavior “premeditated, blatant and willful,” you better be ready to open your wallet. That’ll be $500; at least pay on time. [New York Law Journal]
* If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — but only after a few years, banking on the off chance that the bar admissions people have forgotten about all the bad sh*t you did in law school. [National Law Journal]
* Frank Strickler, Watergate defense lawyer to two of President Nixon’s top aides, RIP. [New York Times]
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
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In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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