–Susan Perera, Attorney
There seems to be few industries with such fiercely combative advertising as wireless phone service providers. Reminiscent of the cell phone map advertisement war in 2009, 4G advertising is certainly on its way to the same level of tension. Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T have all rolled out 4G advertising in the
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–Susan Perera, Attorney
Just across the pond, the UK has been aflutter with the news of the royal engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton since the story broke back in November.
As with many high profile events, this one has spurred some creative ways to profit from Kate’s newly elevated status. One area of
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Do these containers seem similar to you? Confusingly similar?
That is what Coca-Cola, owner of Simply Orange, is claiming. In a recently filed trade dress and patent infringement suit Coca-Cola claims that its Simply Orange container is nonfunctional, contains a patented closure lid, and the new Trop50 packaging is likely to deceive
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Move over Collar and Cuffs, a new trade dress suit has hit the Texas courts and it is set to rival the Chippendale headlines from earlier this fall. The Texas restaurant, Twin Peaks, recently filed suit against the owner of a new Arkansas restaurant called Northern Exposure. (If you haven’t
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Last Wednesday I wrote about t
he parody fair use defense to trademark infringement in connection with the Facebook v. Lamebook lawsuits. Since then another party has asserted the fair use defense, this time in regards to copyright infringement.
Last week the on-line news source, Gawker, published images of more than
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Like most 20-somethings who went to college during the rise of this social media monster, I am quite familiar with Facebook. However, I wasn’t aware of the website Lamebook until the current legal dispute began. Lamebook, a self-proclaimed, “humor blog” was designed to allow people to share the most “ridiculous” things
–Susan Perera, Attorney
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I was surprised to see the six registrations pictured above for color marks come out of the USPTO this month. And I bet that most of you can identify the owner of these marks without even checking the registrations. (If you must, registrations: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Although I wouldn’t consider my childhood one of rural Minnesota, I have still been aware of, and associated, the distinctive green and yellow colors on lawn and tractor equipment with John Deere for as long as I can remember. In fact, I would consider John Deere’s use of color as distinctive as any of the textbook examples (e.g. UPS brown or Owens-Corning pink). Thus, I was quite surprised to see Deere has just now received trademark registrations for some of these color marks.
A little research shows that even the most respected name in lawn and tractor equipment can face an uphill battle to protect its brand. Deere has spent almost 3 decades parsing out the law of color marks and achieving federal registrations for its equipment bearing “John Deere Green” and “John Deere Agricultural Yellow.”
A short summary of Deere color mark history:
t.After the jump a discussion of color trademarks and Deere’s role in the history of trademark color law.
Continue Reading Color Marks & One Company’s Long Haul to Color Mark Protection
–Susan Perera, Attorney
It’s that time of year again, when retail stores featuring ghosts, goblins, and all things spooky begin to appear. This year multiple parties went trick or treating at the USPTO to register their trademarks for Halloween retail store services, and apparently they weren’t all reading Steve’s post from earlier this year regarding
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Always on the look out for interesting shopping finds, my husband snapped these photos of a product at a local Lands End store last week. I couldn’t find the backpack on their website to get any further information about it but I do find this use of BMW pretty interesting.
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We often
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Well, it appears that yesterday’s guest blogger, Andrew Miller, and I are on the same wavelength as I also prepared some thoughts on the new iTunes Ping social networking platform. I guess such is the case in the world of social media where current events can be discussed ad nauseam in a