Tag Archive for: licensing

Central Licensing Bureau, Inc. Falls Victim to Ransomware Attack, Resulting in Leaked Consumer Data | Console and Associates, P.C.

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Recently, Central Licensing Bureau, Inc. confirmed that the company experienced a data breach following a ransomware attack. According to the CLB, the breach resulted in the first and last names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers of affected parties being compromised. On July 8, 2022, CLB filed an official notice of the breach and sent out data breach letters to all affected parties.

If you received a data breach notification, it is essential you understand what is at risk and what you can do about it. To learn more about how to protect yourself from becoming a victim of fraud or identity theft and what your legal options are in the wake of the Central Licensing Bureau data breach, please see our recent piece on the topic here.

Additional Details About the Central Licensing Bureau Data Breach

According to an official notice filed by the company, on November 29, 2021, Central Licensing Bureau detected a ransomware attack in which an unauthorized party accessed and disabled portions of the company’s computer systems. In response, CLB enlisted the assistance of a third-party cybersecurity forensic firm to further secure its systems and investigate the incident. As a result of this investigation, the Central Licensing Bureau learned that the unauthorized party orchestrating the attack was able to gain access to certain files containing consumer data.

Upon discovering that sensitive consumer data was accessible to an unauthorized party, Central Licensing Bureau then reviewed the affected files to determine which consumers were affected and what information of theirs was accessible to the unauthorized party. The Central Licensing Bureau completed this process on June 10, 2022. While the breached information varies depending on the individual, it may include your first and last name, address, date of birth, social security number, and driver’s license number.

On July 8, 2022, Central Licensing Bureau sent out data breach letters to all individuals whose information was compromised as a result of the recent data security incident.

Founded in 1982, Central Licensing Bureau, Inc. is a company that provides support services to the…

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Healthcare Highlights: Cyber-Security, Licensing Board Issues, and Employer COVID-19 Regulations | Ward and Smith, P.A.

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Recently, several Ward and Smith attorneys held a Health Care Breakfast and Learn to provide insights on the healthcare industry relevant to their specific areas of expertise, from privacy and data security to professional licensing issues and, labor and employment.

Privacy and Data Security

Peter McClelland, a privacy, data security, and technology attorney who is also a Certified Information Privacy Professional, began the discussion with some trends and tips for healthcare providers to be aware of in regards to cybersecurity.

“Healthcare and financial services are always neck and neck each year for which industry in the United States gets targeted the most by malicious cyber actors,” said McClelland.

In the world of data security, there are three major trends that have been especially relevant to healthcare providers over the past few years:

  • Substantial increase in cyberattacks – malicious actors using trusted third parties or managed service providers to gain access to computer systems and personal information
  • Significant uptick in the sophistication of cyberattacks – phishing schemes, tiny changes in email addresses, and spoofed email accounts increasingly difficult to identify
  • Increased costs associated with successful attacks – average cost for a data breach in 2020 was around $4 million

Outside of the healthcare industry, an attack on a managed service provider, service partner, or supplier is typically referred to as a supply chain attack. These supply chain attacks are the ones that have made headlines in recent years, with companies such as Colonial Pipeline, Microsoft, and Cassia experiencing significant costs to their finances and brand reputation.

“When you read or hear about any of these things in the news, it can be easy to think that events are only tangentially relevant to you,” explains McClelland, “but the same techniques in all of those get repurposed against entities in the healthcare space every day, whether they make headlines or not.”

McClelland reported that phishing scams in prior years almost seemed to be deliberately obvious in terms of sophistication. Formerly, the most advanced phishing and ransomware technology was mostly just available to…

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Texas A&M Wins Trademark Suit Against Soap Company In Washington State By Playing Six Degrees Of Trademark Licensing

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Readers here will likely be aware of the tortured history of Texas A&M’s “12th Man” trademark. If you’re not, the term describes the fans of the team and their tendency to make so much noise to effect on-field play during games. A&M, which holds a trademark for the term, has made a name for itself as a trademark bully, going around and threatening basically anyone that uses anything remotely like that term, even as it has in the past infringed on the IP of others. The school has been so successful in locking down this term for use in anything sports related that the Seattle Seahawks, the NFL team that also refers to its fans as its “12th Man”, pay a licensing fee to the school to do so.

And now that licensing arrangement appears to be part of the reasoning A&M’s legal team used to sue a soap company based in Washington State for using the “12th Man” term as well. In the school’s filing, embedded below, it argues that because the soap company resides in the same state as the Seahawks, and because the company’s soap product “12th Man Hands” includes an image of a football on the packaging, this makes it an infringement on its trademark, despite soap and athletics not being in related marketplaces. The USPTO somehow actually bought this six-degrees-of-licensing-separation argument.

According to the trademark board, the soap company was trying to call to mind the Seahawks’ 12th Man thing when designing the soap. There’s even a football on the “12th Man Hands” soap bar, and the company acknowledged it was trying to reach Seahawks fans, which makes sense because it’s a Washington-based company.  But according to the board, the soap-makers didn’t clear their use of the 12th Man mark with A&M specifically. That appears to have hurt their case.

And the board ruled against the soap company. That’s ridiculous for several reasons. First, no linkage in geography, nor the company’s desire to reach Seahawks fans, creates confusion on its own in the public. Other than the image of a football, there is no other linkage to the Seahawks at all. It’s just a puck of soap with something of a stock image of a football being held by a hand. Nobody is going to look at that and think it was soap branded by the Seahawks.

Secondly, even if the above weren’t true, the confusion would be between the soap company and Seahawks, not Texas A&M. Whatever the licensing agreement between the Seahawks and the school, there is absolutely zero chance for anyone in the public thinking that Texas A&M has anything to do with this soap company. That, I’m confident saying, is completely inarguable. If anyone should have sued here, it should have been the Seahawks, and even that suit would have been ridiculous. A&M included information about past licensing deals for soap with other companies, but none of them were for “The 12th Man” use, and all of them were instead for university-specific terms and imagery, such as its logo.

How in the world the Trademark Board ever bought into this is beyond me.

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BlackBerry Licensing Its Android OS For Non-Branded BlackBerry Devices Could Be A Game Changer – Seeking Alpha

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Seeking Alpha

BlackBerry Licensing Its Android OS For Non-Branded BlackBerry Devices Could Be A Game Changer
Seeking Alpha
The Economic Times of India reports BlackBerry is going to try to license its own version of the Android OS. However, this will extend far beyond the BlackBerry brand. OEMs will be able to skin this version, which will include BlackBerry security features.

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