Dan Kelly

–Dan Kelly, Attorney

I should confess, if I haven’t already, that I do not watch much television.  I’m not sure if T.V. viewing would have helped me to be more knowledgeable on what follows, but I was surprised on a recent road trip when my wife and I saw a semi trailer splashed with pictures

–Dan Kelly, Attorney

I recently traveled to Omaha and noticed the following billboard:

For those not familiar with these companies, Qwest Communications is a telecommunications company that services many western states.  Cox Communications is another relatively large telecommunications company.  Both serve the Omaha area.  The billboard is an example of nominative fair use, which Steve

–Dan Kelly, Attorney

Four weeks ago, I blogged about FaceBook’s ill-advised move to allow unique username URLs.  Some time between then and now, FaceBook removed the page where trademark owners could defensively register their marks to prevent others from choosing such marks as user names.  Now, a rights holder’s only recourse is to submit

–Dan Kelly, Attorney

I don’t recall what I was doing in January of 2007, but I apparently missed the news that Cisco had sued Apple over Apple’s then-newly announced iPhone product.  I actually stumbled upon this accidentally when I recently searched for federal trademark registrations for IPHONE and found only one, and it belongs to Cisco.  (PDF here.)  Your eyes are not deceiving you:  since 1999, IPHONE has been a federally registered trademark for use in connection with “computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks,” and Cisco is the current owner of this registration.  No joke.  Look here.

This raises dozens of questions in my mind, of which I will present only a few.

Q1.  Did Apple conduct a trademark search prior to rolling out the iPhone?

Q2.  If so, what was the legal and business thought at Apple about Cisco’s IPHONE trademark registration?

Q3.  What should a company like Cisco do when a junior user adops an identical trademark for use on identical goods, and the junior user’s product is wildly successful?

My suggested answers are after the jump.Continue Reading Lessons from the iPhone Trademark Spat