Insights

The United States Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB or Board) recently issued a refreshed opinion in the trademark dispute Naterra International, Inc. v. Samah Bensalem, where Naterra International, Inc. petitioned the TTAB to cancel Samah Bensalem’s registration for the mark BABIES' MAGIC TEA based on its own BABY MAGIC mark. On remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the TTAB reconsidered an expert’s opinion about relatedness of goods based on the concept of “umbrella branding” and found that the goods are unrelated and therefore again denied the petition for cancellation.

The Southern District of New York issued a recent opinion in Lehrman et al v. Lovo, Inc., 1-24-cv-03770 (SDNY Jul. 10, 2025) (J. Paul Oetken) regarding copyright infringement issues involving artificial intelligence models, focusing this time on voice cloning. Two voice-over actors, Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage, filed a lawsuit against Lovo, Inc., a company specializing in AI-driven text-to-speech services. The Plaintiffs alleged that Lovo used artificial intelligence to clone their voices without authorization, raising complex legal questions regarding intellectual property and privacy rights in the age of AI.

Will the Supreme Court review the Ninth Circuit’s unique Server Test for online copyright infringement? After the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed the Server Test, a photographer and copyright owner has requested certiorari. Petitioner-Plaintiff, Elliot McGucken, is a landscape photographer. Respondent-Defendant, Valnet, Inc., is the owner of a travel website located at “www.thetravel.com.” McGucken sued Valnet for copyright infringement when Valnet embedded on its site a number of links to McGucken’s Instagram posts. The district court, bound by the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Perfect 10, granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss, finding that the Server Test foreclosed McGucken’s direct infringement claim as a matter of law, because Valnet linked to the images and did not store them on its own servers. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in a panel decision. McGucken now requests the Supreme Court to review the validity of the Server Test, which is unique to the Ninth Circuit.