For years, Samsung and Apple have battled over intellectual property rights associated with each party’s smart phones. Apple sued Samsung in 2011 and the jury found that Samsung had infringed Apple’s trade dress, design patents, and utility patents. On May 15, 2015, the Federal Circuit upheld the findings regarding infringement of design and utility patents,
Noticing Your Exposure to Color Marks
–Susan Perera, Attorney
A few weeks ago I wrote about the use of unique colors in trademarks and logos as a potential way to differentiate your brand. Like using distinctive colors as part of a trademark, many companies use distinctive colors on their actual products to act as source identifiers.
While a color trademark for
Spot that Spout
–Susan Perera, Attorney
It was time for a new kitchen faucet at our house and after opening the box of our new Delta faucet we noticed this image on the side panel of the box.
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The registration for this kitchen faucet product configuration mark (shown farthest to the right on the box) can be seen here.
As we have discussed previously, product configuration marks protect the distinctive design or shape of a product.
Product configuration marks generally require a showing that the configuration has acquired distinctiveness (serves as an identifier of source ) in order to be registered. In this case, that means the configuration above identifies Delta Faucet Company
Does it? Well, how about an exciting round of “Spot that Spout” to find out?
Below are a few different faucets available at your local home improvement store. So who makes these faucets, are they all Delta? And if not are they distinguishable from Delta’s product configuration registration?
Answers after the jump…
Shot in the Dark – the PPK Design Trademark
—Karen Brennan, attorney
I found Fig. 1 (from what I am sure was a very valuable patent, although I could not locate it) to be very fitting for this post. After three and half years, four Office Actions, a Petition to the Director and finally an appeal, our client’s product configuration mark for the PPK
Ode to Le Tour De France
— Karen Brennan, Attorney
Now that the Tour de France is over, it looks like the choices in evening television once again consist of several versions of the same reality show. I can’t complain, the Tour was phenomenal this year and I enjoyed every minute I was able to watch (thank you DVR).
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