Trademark Office

What do you think, is Overstock.com selling bling with the Fordless blue oval logo?

Enamel Turquoise with Blue Ovals Bangle Bracelet

As you may recall from my post back in September, Ford Motor Company is attempting to register the below shown non-verbal logo as a trademark for a variety of goods in Int’l Class 12:

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And, as you may recall from Dan’s I See Blue Ovals post back in August, there are far more than a handful of blue oval logos out there besides this one:

 

The pending Fordless blue oval intent-to-use trademark application recently was examined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), and on October 23, 2009, the PTO found no substantive bases for refusal, but instead it issued an initial refusal noting only a couple of purely procedural or technical deficiencies, concerning the wording in the lengthy description of goods and the need for Ford to submit a claim of ownership to some related registrations (here, here, and here).Continue Reading More On The Fordless Blue Oval

For the last month or so I’ve been following the antics of Twitter as they attempt to assert rights to the word "tweet". Based on their completely inconsistent—one might even say schizophrenic approach, I feel justified in using the word "antics".

Until very recently, Twitter didn’t seem to care much about what third-party apps were named. In fact, in a blog post from July 2009, founder Biz Stone said, "Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with "Twitter" we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line."

Note the phrasing: “suggesting more original branding”. What happens if the developers don’t take the suggestion? By allowing so many third party apps to use the name already, they’ve tacitly given permission for others to infringe on their trademark. If they then try to defend their trademark against the new filers, what can they say?Continue Reading Twitter, Twitter Everywhere — But Will They Own the Tweet?

Cadbury Adams, a Cadbury Schweppes Company

My recent family road trip through the heartland had me spending more time than usual pumping gas and shopping in convenience stores, so a few chewing gum brands “gone single letter” caught my eye. As you may recall, I already have reported on Single Letter Envy in Hotel Branding. Well, it appears that the quest for single or one-letter brands is not limited to the hospitality industry (let alone others I’m sure to write about in the future), but has “stretched” to the confectionery industry too.

Turns out, both single letter gum brands that caught my eye are owned by the same company, Cadbury-Adams, part of “Cadbury plc – a leading global confectionery business with the number one or number two position in over 20 of the world’s 50 largest confectionery markets.”

Yes, Cadbury Adams has migrated from its long-lasting Bubblicious brand name (having equal style for each letter) to a differently styled beginning B in Bubblicious, and most recently, to the letter B, standing alone, front and center on packaging; fully-truncated to B, as shown above. So, in our ever-abbreviated and truncated branding world, where G now means Gatorade (among other things, as a previously blogged about here), B now apparently means Bubblicious, and S now means Stride (another Cadbury Adams chewing gum brand). Might care be in order to avoid having these two brands appear side by side on store shelves — at least in the order appearing above — to avoid some unintended combined meaning of the brands? Perhaps one of the “sticky” consequences of single letter brands is the temptation others may have to spell alternate and unfavorable words and acronyms with them.

As you might imagine, confronting these single letter brands raises a number of questions in need of some answers. For example, are single or one-letter brands for chewing and bubble gum, just the latest flavor trend, or are they here to stay? Why are they currently so appealing, at least to Cadbury Adams? Are there other single letter gum brands in the marketplace, or just B S? Lastly, what are some of the legal ramifications of branding single letters for confectioners?

I’ll leave the first two questions for others to chew on — especially marketers, but I’ll take a crack at the second two.Continue Reading Single Letter Chewing Gum Brands: A Lasting Flavor or Just B S?

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Best Buy, owner of the Geek Squad brand since 2002, has filed a federal trademark infringement complaint in Minnesota against a pair of individual defendants apparently located in Missouri and California, for allegedly registering and using <thegeekpatrol.biz> domain and the names “Geek Patrol,” “Geek Squad,” and “Geek Squad Patrol”. Here is a copy of the Complaint, including Exhibit A (Trademark registrations), Exhibit B (DomainTools.com print out), Exhibit C (Tollfreeda.com print out), and Exhibit D (Superpages.com print out).

For those of you interested in great entrepreneurial stories, Robert Stephens founded Geek Squad while a student at the University of Minnesota, riding his bicycle around Minneapolis to make computer house calls. The stylish collection of branded Beetles permitted Stephens to cover much more ground when making house calls or office calls. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Robert Stephens and toured his humble first office located above Moose & Sadie’s cafe and coffeehouse blocks from downtown Minneapolis. He gave me and my wife what are now vintage Geek Squad t-shirts, obviously we should have had them autographed at the time!

My early and initial observations of the Geek Squad trademark Complaint are below the jump.Continue Reading Battle of the Nerds? Best Buy’s Geek Squad¬Æ on Trademark Patrol

Furminator deShedding Tool

If FURminator Inc. were looking for a pitchman to promote and increase sales of the “famous” FURminator® pet grooming tool, and recognizing the recent, sudden and unforfunate passing of famous bearded TV pitchman Billy Mays (who could sell household products better than just about anyone, and still appears to be doing so after his passing), I’m thinking that the fictional cyborg assassin character played by “Ahnold” in “The Terminator” film would be the next best pitchman for the futuristic, stylish, and eye-catching pet grooming product shown above.

While either Billy Mays or Ahnold probably could have increased, or still could increase, sales of the product, it is more likely that neither could have saved the company from losing its bid to register trademark protection for the claimed trade dress, covering the three dimensional shape and appearance of the product. Since the applications were refused registration by the U.S. Trademark Office on functionality grounds here and here, and they terminated (were abandoned) without response, I suspect that early collaborations between legal and marketing types (and probably engineering types too) is all that might have helped avoid the terminal fate of these wishful non-traditional trademark applications.

Continue Reading The FURminator® and Ads Touting Utility: Marking the Termination of Product Configuration Trademark Protection?