‘Tis the season for gratitude and thankfulness, and avoiding conflict and fruitcake.

From a trademark perspective, every season is for avoiding genericness, right?

After all, generic designations are part of the public domain, they aren’t own-able.

So, why is Guaranteed Rate continuing to invest in Rate.com, found to be generic

When thinking about brands comprising religious matter, I think of EZEKIEL 4:9.

The EZEKIEL 4:9 brand has been registered as a trademark for bread since 1990.

The brand owner had to clear some chaff from the Principal Register to do so, threshing this EZEKIEL as abandoned, and gaining this EZEKIEL by assignment.

It presently

Now that we’re back in the blogging business, I’m anxious to be able to harvest some visual trademark stories captured on my iPhone over the past 7 months:

Are you surprised to see the federal registration symbol marking World’s Softest?

After all, the phrase seems to communicate important information about the socks in question, as

It’s been a while . . . about seven months now.

As you’ll see, a few things have happened since April, when we last left you with these gems on the topic of trademark bullying: Stop Bullying the Entrepreneurs, What does Entrepreneur Mean, Anyway?, and Public Shaming is Not the Solution to Trademark

Let’s be very clear, today is April Fools’ Day, but this is not an April Fools’ Joke.

It’s not every day Seth Godin volunteers a guest post, but Thursday was that day.

Friday we published Stop Bullying the Entrepreneurs, 33 comments and counting.

This isn’t the first time Seth has spoken out against trademark

Seth Godin

It’s not good marketing and I’m pretty sure it’s not good law, either.

It seems as though Entrepreneur magazine (who should know better) is working with Latham and Watkins (who should certainly know better) to persist in their relentless efforts to bully entrepreneurs to stop using the word ‘entrepreneur’.

And yes, it’s

Let’s all hope that the Supplemental Trademark Register is not on the death watch.

It appears though to be on life support, at times, and especially with the USPTO’s heightened focus on “merely informational” matter, including laudatory messages.

This is a common basis for registration refusal nowadays: “Merely informational matter fails to function as a