A recent stroll through the Minneapolis skyway and the above construction billboard reminded me that we haven’t discussed the picture-word equivalency doctrine in trademark law for some time.
Judging from the supersize nature and precise placement of the ® federal registration symbol next to the ladder logo shown above, you’d think that City National
We write a lot here about the scope and strength of trademark rights and how that determination is often intertwined to making intelligent likelihood of confusion determinations.
Does “April Madness” fall within the NCAA’s scope of trademark rights for “March Madness“?
Likelihood of confusion? Is “March Madness” a famous mark deserving protection from
Last week, we discussed Caribou Coffee’s billboard ad referencing transparency — this week another installment from Caribou’s current Minneapolis skyway billboard campaign:
That one made me think of this one, a post from a few months back about Kind nutritional bars and their Ingredients You Can See And Pronounce tagline and trademark:
Marketing types, if
Seeing this Caribou Coffee skyway billboard was a good reminder to me of how much we hear about the importance of transparency in our relationships, including those with brands we love:
It appears that the prevalence of society’s use of the word “transparency” may be at an all time high, where the
First things first: Happy 4th of July, Dear Readers!
That was a pretty honest, simple, genuine, transparent, straightforward, to the point, not belaboring at all, under any circumstances, my most sincere wishes to our dear readers, agree?
Now contrast the original well wishes with the elaborate description of them, the latter being anything but short
Life is full of ups and downs. The world of trademarks often tends to mirror life. Yet, for the time being, the USPTO currently recognizes only one brand and mark as living solely on ups:
As it turns out, those three letters form a pretty powerful brand and trademark. Although there may have been
Section 2(d) of the Trademark Act is the statutory basis for refusing registration based on likelihood of confusion with another mark. It is invoked on an ex parte basis by USPTO Examining Attorneys, and it is also raised in the context of inter partes cases between adversaries.
When an applicant seeking to register its mark
To the extent you’re also all about brands and trademarks, and you imagine a trademark story with each brand you might encounter, I suppose there are an infinite number of ways, right?
One of the Peace Coffee shops in our office building offers K’UL chocolate, and the point of sale display caught my eye,
While lynx may not be generally known for having a ferocious bite, they do have sharp teeth and I’m sure they can inflict serious pain when they do decide to attack.
In the same way, while breadth can be a good thing when it comes to how a brand owner recites its services in
Time spent with my boys in Omaha at the College World Series is hard to beat. Although, last year, Father’s Day weekend was hard to beat too. And, the archives indicate five years ago was pretty wonderful as well. Basically, it’s all good.
On this particular road trip, we were fortunate to score tickets