Trademark enforcement against infringing domains on the Internet is frequently likened to playing Whac-A-Mole. Just as soon as you eliminate one, up pops another, and another, etc.
Dan’s post from last week on the most recent land rush on the Internet — with the creation of almost infinite Internet real estate — may be a
As we have written before, any brand extension requires the necessary due diligence to mitigate the risk of a serious trademark conflict. And, from a trademark perspective, both strength and scope of rights necessarily expand as the number of different goods and services sold under the brand grows.
If recent marketing research on
Minnesota State Representative Joyce Peppin, is convinced that “trademark bullying” is a problem and that it requires a brand new law in Minnesota to properly deal with it.
Representative Peppin apparently is a law student at William Mitchell College of Law, and she has teamed up with other students and William
The Louboutin lacquered red sole trademark is the subject of great debate in the trademark world, fashion industry, popular news media, and among law school academics and friends of the court.
I’m just not seeing it. I really don’t see a viable trademark claim here for Louboutin. Not for the reasons
The letter "W" is an interesting one. Besides being the twenty-third letter in the alphabet, it is the only one having more than one syllable; it has three — unless it is pronounced with two: dub-yah.
It is more than a bit ironic that — as a truncated single-letter brand — W, in most cases, has three times the syllables
A few bits of trademark advice recently passed across my screen from The Marketing Blog: Turning Entrepreneurs Into Marketers — advice that I believe deserves some friendly comment and critique, leaving you to decide whether any of it rises to the level of brilliant trademark advice or sinks to the level of trademark baloney:
There aren’t too many things I enjoy more than speaking about the legal implications of branding.
Our friends at BlackCoffee captured a talk I gave to a group of marketing types a while back, on black and white film (thank goodness), and they have graciously posted a 34 minute excerpt, here.
Some of the topics
Seems as though there is a lot of discussion and news reports these days about bullying and how to put a stop to it: School bullying, workplace bullying, and cyber-bullying, to name a few of the most common types. Fair enough, as I recall, my seventh grade PE teacher was a real bully.
However, for those of you who haven’t heard yet, there also is growing interest in examining a brand new type of bully, and they are calling this creature the "trademark bully".
That’s right, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is currently seeking information about various litigation tactics, including whether "you think trademark “bullies” are currently a problem for trademark owners, and if so, how significant is the problem?" If you have an opinion on these questions, please share your views below, and the USPTO would like to hear from you here.
So, what is a "trademark bully" you ask? The USPTO’s survey provides this definition: "A trademark ‘bully’ could be described as a trademark owner that uses its trademark rights to harass and intimidate another business beyond what the law might be reasonably interpreted to allow."
The USPTO’s "trademark bullying" inquiry apparently stems from some language in the Trademark and Technical Conforming Amendment of 2010, directing the Secretary of Commerce to "study and report" to Congress on “The extent to which small businesses may be harmed by litigation tactics attempting to enforce trademark rights beyond a reasonable interpretation of the scope of the rights granted to the trademark owner.”
Beyond a "reasonable" interpretation of the scope of rights granted to the trademark owner? Of course, the plaintiff and defendant will never agree on what might be considered a "reasonable" interpretation of the scope of plaintiff’s trademark rights, even in the most routine trademark cases, so whose perspective decides what is reasonable for the purpose of applying the trademark bully label, and what are the consequences, if guilty? Moreover, who decides what "might be" reasonable under the circumstances, since those additional qualifying terms appear in the USPTO query?
In addition, I’ve heard before that "reasonable" minds can differ on just about anything. And, in my experience that is especially so when it comes to arguing and deciding trademark disputes, where litigants argue over and decision makers are asked to carefully balance the evidence according to a number of multi-factor tests, including likelihood of confusion, trademark fame, likelihood of dilution, and bad faith intent to profit, to name just a few. This isn’t exactly black and white material. Then, add to all that, an understanding that trademark rights are dynamic, not static, their scope can shrink or grow over time, and also recognize that trademark attorneys have an ethical duty to zealously represent their clients.
So, even with all that, we’re still to decide how to apply the trademark bullying label based on mere reasonableness? Sorry, but that seems, well, unreasonable to me.Continue Reading The Mark of a Real Trademark Bully
Welcome to another edition of AlphaWatch (the next one in our queue), where we explore the reach of single-letter trademarks, this time focusing on the letter Q and the single-letter branding cues it might suggest to consumers:
Are you able to name the un-truncated version of this single-letter mark and brand?
My daughter could. The answer is below the jump.Continue Reading Taking Branding Cues from Q in the Single-Letter Trademark Queue
