Brooke Oliver

Practice Details

• Languages
  Spanish
  Italian
  Japanese
  Vietnamese
• Firm Information
  Position

  Senior Counsel

  Firm Name

  Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP
• Representative Cases & Transactions
  Cases

  Representative Matters: Protecting the trademark Dykes on Bikes: : Prosecuted registration of the trademark Dykes on Bikes all the way to the United States Supreme Court twice. This was a major victory for the LGBT community
  a l
  mark trademark law decision. McDermott v. San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent, 240 Fed. Appx. 865 (Fed. Cir. 2007), cert denied 552 U.S. 1109 (2008). The case has been cited in treatises, at least four Trademark Trial
  Appeal Board decisions,
  numerous law review articles. 9-300 Gilson on Trademarks 303, 309 (Matthew Bender & Co. 2013)
  1-3 Intellectual Property Counseling
  Litigation 3.02 (Matthew Bender & Co. 2013) As amicus counsel, Brooke lead the briefing on nonprofits' political speech through their trademarks, ultimately resulting in the Slants' win, overturning a 70 year-old law that allowed the USPTO to decide what is or is not derogatory. Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. (2017).
  L
  mark decisions for Visual Artists' Rights Act claims:: In Baca
  SPARC v. LA Metro
  Caltrans, Brooke achieved an unprecedented settlement whereby those transportation agencies agreed to pay for the restoration of Judy Baca's iconic Hitting the Wall mural in downtown LA (2021). In one of the earliest VARA cases about the monumental Lilli Ann Mural in San Francisco's Mission District., Brooke obtained a Temporary Restraining Order, a preliminary injunction, a m
  atory injunction,
  finally a $200,000 public settlement before a magistrate judge, which was at that time the highest VARA damages award.
  Freeing Greek gods to inspire gamers:: Brooke successfully defended Sony Computer Entertainment America's God of War video game in a high-stakes copyright infringement case, securing. summary judgment for defendants SCEA
  game creator David Jaffe, upholding the right of game developers
  artists to draw freely from the inspiration of public domain Greek myth. Bissoon-Dath v. Sony Computer Entm't Am., Inc., 694 F.Supp.2d 1071 (N.D. Cal. 2010), aff'd. Dath v. Sony Computer Entm't Am., Inc., 653 F.3d 898 (9th Cir. 2011).
  Building a future for Burning Man:: served as legal architect of Burning Man's nonprofit infrastructure, including securing 501(c)(3) status for the Burning Man Project
  h
  ling the nonprofit's acquisition of Black Rock City, LLC (now a subsidiary of the nonprofit), which included extensive due diligence
  related transactions. She did the transactional legal work that helped Burning Man Project embrace the nonprofits Burners Without Borders
  Black Rock Arts Foundation as subsidiaries. Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey called Brooke's approach law in the service of soul.
  Legal victory for music legends:: Litigated
  successfully resolved a diversity jurisdiction publicity rights action by the estates of music legends Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Barry White
  Miles Davis against a national restaurant franchisor, creating an unprecedented collaboration among those legends' heirs
  successor companies.