#trademark-dispute

#trademark-dispute

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is again turning up the pressure on prediction market operator Kalshi, this time tying its trademark concerns directly to March Madness, the association's signature men's and women's basketball tournaments. The NCAA claims that Kalshi has used its name, marks and event branding in ways that suggest an official link. March Madness is owned and controlled by the NCAA, and the association says any implication of endorsement or verification crosses a legal line.

But on January 28, the sleek doors at 499 Jackson Street quietly closed up, and the $16 functional lattes stopped flowing. But the "Erewhon of the North" didn't go out in bankruptcy. After a year of being the chicest spot for the venture capital crowd to grab a "Glow" smoothie, owners Gina and Stuart Peterson decided that the grind of daily retail wasn't for them.

Autodesk first introduced Flow in 2022 as a cloud-based platform for filmmakers and other creators. It has since rolled out products under the Flow umbrella, including Flow Studio, which uses AI to transform live-action footage into 3D scenes. After Google launched its AI-powered Flow app in May 2025, Autodesk claims it asked the tech giant to stop using the "Flow" name. Google allegedly responded by saying it would market the product as "Google Flow - rather than just "Flow."

Front Office Sports reported on Tuesday that the A's, who have had issues getting a ballpark going in their future home city, have been rebuffed in attempts to register "Las Vegas Athletics" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This is reportedly the second failed attempt to trademark the new name, something that initially bewildered experts. "The examiner is taking this very literally," trademark attorney Josh Gerben told FOS.

The Cybercab, for the uninformed, is Tesla's purpose-built vehicle for giving driverless rides. Right now, its capital-R Robotaxi service, which operates as a comically tiny fleet exclusively in Austin, Texas, uses existing Tesla Model Ys, not specialized cars (and its trademark is itself under peril due to yet more incompetence, as we'll explain later.) A prototype of the two-passenger, no-steering wheel Cybercab was unveiled at Tesla's "We, Robot" event over a year ago, and Musk claims it'll enter production in Q2 this year.

"The MPA has worked for decades to earn the public's trust in its rating system," Naresh Kilaru, a lawyer for the MPA, said in an Oct. 28 letter to Meta. "Any dissatisfaction with Meta's automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA's rating system," Kilaru added in the letter, which was shared with NBC News on Wednesday.

"The MPA 's ratings program is a rigorous, human-driven process where every film is carefully assigned an individualized rating and content descriptors. Whatever mechanism Meta uses to moderate content cannot responsibly be compared to that comprehensive process. The MPA's program rates roughly 500 films a year; millions and potentially billions of images and videos are posted to Instagram each day," it said, asking for the social media giant to implement remedial measures.

Ken Biberaj got a surprising call from his lawyer earlier this year, six months after he filed a trademark application for the name of his policy-focused interview podcast, Coffee With Ken. The US Patent and Trademark Office had given its preliminary approval, but now there was a problem: A challenge had been filed, the lawyer said. The objecting party turned out to be Mattel, the maker of Barbie. "Wait, because of the Ken doll? " Biberaj recalls saying.

The lawsuit adds that it is in clear contravention of the general principle of good faith, and of the rules on fair competition and commercial ethics as there is a clear interest in commercial exploitation on the part of the defendant to take advantage of the fame of our client by obtaining a trademark registration that evidently seeks to be related to Pedro Pascal for profit, and on the basis of distracting consumers toward an erroneous commercial origin.

"Yesterday, Oracle filed a motion to dismiss in response to Deno's petition to cancel its 'JavaScript' trademark," Deno Land CEO Dahl said. "But instead of addressing the real issue-that JavaScript is an open standard with multiple independent implementations-Oracle is trying to stall the process and sidestep accountability."