Trademark
Can Patagonia Own a Pun?
How a pun, a drag queen and a $1 lawsuit are testing whether trademark law can tell the difference between appreciation and infringement.
New · AI & Liability
Can ChatGPT Practice Law?
A workplace injury, a chatbot that told her to fire her lawyer and the first federal lawsuit asking whether an AI can be guilty of practicing law without a licence.
Top Stories
Commentary
A Tamagotchi for Grown-Ups
What consumer and privacy law can see, and what it still cannot, when a data-hungry AI agent arrives wearing a friendly face.
AI Governance
No …. We Have Reg 10
How a regulation most people have never heard of and a financial free zone roughly the size of Canary Wharf are producing the world’s first regulatory certification for the people who oversee AI.
AI & Liability
Could Matching Your Skin Tone Be Considered Discrimination?
How a beauty loyalty programme, 13,000 arbitration demands and a self-reported skin colour field produced a question California law has never had to answer before.
Now Playing
The Obiter Dictum Podcast
Episode Four is live: Someone Else’s Name, on how the most-watched film in Netflix history quietly drowned a Christian metal band out of its own trademark. It opens the Can You Own That? trilogy — three essays on a name, a shape and a word. Every episode pairs with its companion article and plays on the podcast page and on YouTube.
From the Archive
Trade Dress
Who Owns an Octagon?
How Audemars Piguet lost the legal right to its most famous design, and why a $400 pocket watch might be the smartest response.
Dupe Culture
Does It Matter If Nobody Is Fooled?
How dupe culture broke the one thing trademark law needs to work, and why the courts are struggling to keep up.
AI & Liability
Can ChatGPT Tell You What's Wrong?
A bank holiday, an eleven-year-old's phone call, and a wrongful death lawsuit about the only second opinion available.
AI & Liability
Who's Liable When the Chatbot Lies?
A grieving passenger, a fabricated refund policy and Air Canada's discovery that its own chatbot was legally binding.