Loyal readers know how important look-for advertising can be in making the difference between establishing trademark ownership in the shape or configuration of a product, and being left with nothing but a goose egg (as opposed to a Big Green Egg). That’s not to say, the clunky words “look-for” are required, yet something equivalent

We have some razor sharp readers and guest bloggers. We’re deeply thankful and especially grateful when our readers and guest bloggers send us real life illustrations of marketing pitfalls we’ve identified, sliced and diced here on DuetsBlog. They provide more great teaching tools.

Hat tip to our own James Mahoney of Razor’s Edge Communications for

ShawBarrellThis isn’t the first time we’ve written about brand owners who shoot themselves in the foot with their advertising. And, I’m sure it won’t be the last.

As we’ve discussed before, touting the function of a product design feature can kill any hope of owning non-traditional trademark protection in that feature.

The latest example from

Welcome to yet another edition of non-traditional trademarks, but instead of discussing brown paper bags for chips as trademarks, today we’re focusing on a U.S. trademark registration that surprisingly issued just a few weeks ago — a net bag package design for holding toy marbles:

ORC001As shown above, the claimed mark “consists of

Welcome to another edition of non-traditional trademarks in connection with package designs:

BillGoatChipBag

The Billy Goat Chip Company contends it owns exclusive rights in a protectable and distinctive trademark for the appearance of the above chip bag, minus any words or images — just the shape and configuration of the bag. (Reminds me of my

As it turns out, four days after Easter, the USPTO refused registration of the Big Green Egg’s claimed exclusive rights in the shape and color of its popular barbecue smoker and grill:

GreenEggSpecimenAs you will recall, we wrote about this product configuration trademark application, back in December of last year. Here are the challenges

FUSE 2015 is off to being yet another amazing, inspiring event for brand strategy and design professionals. The keynote speaker for day one was Eric Quint, Chief Design Officer of 3M, who delivered a very interesting presentation called: “Future Forward: Beyond Design Tourism.”

Little did Mr. Quint know that he set the table nicely

We’ve been spilling a lot of digital ink lately on the topic of non-traditional trademark protection and how the functionality doctrine serves as an absolute bar for such protection.

As you know, for some time, we’ve been stressing the importance of close collaboration between trademark and marketing types when it comes to forming public communications

Welcome to another edition of newly filed configuration trademark applications at the USPTO, here is the latest; it is quite a specimen:

numberedtubeThe question for the day though is whether the claimed mark actually functions as a trademark to indicate that the goods come from a single source.

The claimed mark is described this way