So-called “fluid” trademarks are gaining a recent downpour of attention — on Monday INTA wrote about them in the Daily News distributed in Dallas at INTA’s 135th Annual Meeting, it also held a panel discussion on the topic the same date (we’ll have more about that next week), and just yesterday guest-blogger Jason Voiovich provided an insightful marketer’s perspective on the topic here. Last week, I mentioned that Rob Litowitz blogged about them, here.
Later this month, Strafford will host a webinar called “Leveraging Fluid Trademarks: Best Practices for Creating and Using Fluid Trademarks to Enhance Brands Without Compromising IP Rights.”
So, what’s with the umbrellas? The Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport displays the above interactive umbrella signage promoting Travelers insurance. Now, I don’t purport to comprehend the technology that makes it possible, but the result is pretty cool, because as airport “travelers” pass alongside these interactive signs the red flower petals that form the silhouette of the umbrella disperse and scatter randomly until he or she is fully past the sign and then the petals reassemble themselves into the form of the original umbrella silhouette:
The first time I recall encountering the “fluid” trademark label was in a LinkedIn group discussion (TTAB Law Forum) in December of 2011.
When did you first encounter the “fluid” label?