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Day Pitney Boston partner Carrie Webb Olson will be the guest speaker at the Connecticut Intellectual Property Law Association meeting February 10. Ms. Olson will be discussing: In re Bose Corp. and other recent trademark developments. Ms. Olson is a partner in Day Pitney's Intellectual Property Group, where she focuses on all aspects of copyright and trademark law.

In In re Bose Corp., the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's (TTAB) "known or should have known" standard confirming that a finding of fraud requires clear and convincing evidence of an intent to deceive. See In re Bose Corp., No. 2008-1448, slip op. (Fed. Cir. August 31, 2009).

In holding that "a trademark is obtained fraudulently under the Lanham Act only if the applicant or registrant knowingly makes a false, material representation with the intent to deceive the PTO," the Federal Circuit has made it significantly more difficult to prove fraud in trademark proceedings. In the past six years, the TTAB had employed a "should have known" standard, which the Bose court equated to a lesser standard of negligence. The Bose court ruled, however, that "[t]he standard for finding intent to deceive is stricter than the standard for finding negligence," and held that the stricter standard applies to trademark fraud cases.

The CIPLA meeting will be held from 6:00pm to 9:00pm at the Graduate Club in New Haven, CT (for more information, visit www.graduateclub.com, or call 203-624-3197).

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