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The surprise in this TTAB decision is that the applicant filed the appeal at all.
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) upheld trademark attorney’s decision that the trademark PITTSBURGH GLASS WORKS was primarily geographically descriptive of a glass manufacturer with some business activities in Pittsburgh. For more details, see TTAB Affirms Section 2(e)(2) Geographical Descriptiveness [...]
I Have a Trademark, How do I Evict the Cybersquatter from My Domain Name?
The domain name business remains rough-and-tumble. Little consideration goes into the niceties of paying attention to trademark rights. If you have a federally registered trademark and don’t already have a corresponding domain name, chances are the domain name has already been [...]
A new trademark but somewhat strange trademark infringement suit: Chipotle filed suit against Kroger for trademark infringement.
Some of the relevant questions:
Does Kroger’s Spicy Fried Chicken actually contain chipotle seasoning in it? Or did Kroger simply decide to rebrand its spicy fried chicken with something sexier than Chester the chicken?
Dan [...]
The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, together with the Economics and Statistics Administration, has just released a report on Intellectual Property’s effect on the U. S. economy. You can find the report here.
The take-away message is that in 2010, Intellectual-Property-intensive industries, directly or indirectly, generated 40 million jobs in the U. S. In [...]
The 4th Circuit has reinstated Rosetta Stone’s case against Google based on Google using (selling) Rosetta Stone’s trademarks to other advertisers. For more information see this article by Geri Haight.
Many trademark applicants are getting official looking notices from scam artists. These notices make it appear that the notice is from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Unless carefully examined these notices can fool just about anyone. In fact, one of our trademark clients received such a notice and assumed it was real. Luckily, [...]
Wealth Strategies Journal: Trademarks have always been an important corporate asset, but these days they can be much more so when they are also internet domain names that attract and direct customers to websites where products are sold. Thus, it follows that a business in distress or in a dispute will naturally try to [...]
ABA Journal: A company that sued a so-called Twittersquatter for using its name to post sarcastic tweets has dropped its legal effort.
Coventry First dropped the suit late Tuesday, according to Public Citizen’s Consumer Law & Policy Blog. Public Citizen had defended the anonymous person who used the @coventryfirst handle. (The author [...]
AZCentral: A Las Vegas casino is suing a Scottsdale nightclub in federal court after the Nevada company says the nightclub copied its trademarked logo.
The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, names Arizona-based Revolver, LLC,as a defendant.
Court documents say that Scottsdale’s Revolver Lounge is infringing on trademark [...]
Bloomberg: “The Hells Angels motorcycle group sued fashion design house Alexander McQueen and retail chain Saks Inc. for trademark infringement for selling handbags, jewelry and clothing using the club’s death-head design.”
Wall St. Journal: “As the leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen For the Cure helped make “for the cure” a staple of the fund-raising vernacular. The slogan is so popular that dozens of groups have sought to trademark names incorporating the phrase . . . . Komen . . . launching a not-so-friendly [...]
CNN Money: “The new regulations, which kick in at the start of 2012, require any taxpayer with business income to issue 1099 forms to all vendors from whom they purchased more than $600 of goods and services that year. That promises to launch a fusillade of new paperwork: An estimated 40 million taxpayers [...]
E-Commerce Law: “On April 29, 2010, the United States District Court for the District of Arizona granted, in part, Plaintiff’s request to enjoin the Defendants’ use of certain trademarks and domain names related to skydiving in Arizona. Skydive Arizona, Inc. v. Quattrocchi, 2010 WL 1743189 (D. Ariz. April 29, 2010).”
We are going to miss blogging about the North Face vs. South Butt trademark dispute because the parties settled the lawsuit.
theadvocate.com: “Who Dat suing NFL Properties? And the New Orleans Saints? And the state of Louisiana? Who Dat? Who Dat? Inc. filed suit in federal district court in Baton Rouge, alleging that the defendants wrongly damaged the firm’s right to profit in the weeks leading to the Saints’ Super Bowl championship last month.” [...]
Can you say bad publicity is better than no publicity? Former actress and paparazzi favorite party-girl Lindsay Lohan filed a lawsuit that should be a lot of fun to follow. She sued E-Trade over a commercial in which a baby had the audacity to say “Lindsay” without LiLo’s written permission. Everybody knows that [...]
Hyundai’s thirty second Super Bowl commercial could cost the company a lot more than the cost of production and TV air time. Watch the video and see if you recognize the trademark allegedly being infringed. Click here to see the name of the plaintiff that sued Hyundai for trademark infringement. See the actual complaint.
From the bad PR or what where they thinking department. Orlando Sentinel: “The old goat is back at Lake Mary High, and we are not talking about any former teachers or administrators. No, it’s a staid and not so 2010 image of the school’s ram mascot that has shown up to reclaim his [...]
Do fictitious characters have intellectual property rights? Yes argues Geoff Gerber of the Anchor Plate. If you think you can profit from piggy-backing on the fame of Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker or Kermit the Frog, you may be asking for legal trouble. For an interesting discussion of Kermit’s intellectual property rights, see “Character [...]
Wall St. Journal: “Well this should be interesting to watch. Two restaurants that unapologetically do harm to their patrons are now trying to do harm to each other. The owner of an Arizona restaurant called Heart Attack Grill, an eatery that dishes up artery-clogging burger-and-fries, including the so-called Quadruple Bypass Burger . . [...]
Arizona Republic: “Former nutritionist Jon Basso [owns the] . . . Heart Attack Grill. The grill is a medical-themed restaurant in Chandler that serves high-calorie foods and no diet drinks. . . . Brasso has become embroiled in a federal lawsuit with the Heart Stoppers Sports Grill on Interstate 95 I-95 in Delray [...]
Phoenix Business Journal: “Stereo headphone maker Koss Corp. settled a trademark infringement lawsuit against a Mesa [Arizona] company [called Zounds, Inc.] that used the Koss slogan ‘Hearing is Believing”.”
The Huffington Post: “Had Saints fans chanted, ‘Who Are Those Who Claim They Can Defeat The Saints, Who Are Those?’ then perhaps the NFL would not have found itself in a trademark dispute last week, but instead the fans chanted, ‘Who Dat Who Say Dey Beat Dem Saints, Who Dat, Who Dat’, and [...]
Professor Eric Johnson: “My alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, has distinguished itself as a trademark bully, happy to squelch free speech in the pursuit of licensing revenues. Here’s just one example: A couple years ago, they sued an outfit making t-shirts, sold to fans of rival Texas A&M, that depicted a broken [...]
Wall St. Journal: “For decades, even through a multitude of dismal seasons, New Orleans Saints fans have belted out a cheer they say is as much a part of the fabric of their city as jambalaya and jazz: ‘Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?’ Now some are [...]
Times-Picayune: “Who Dat say? The NFL say, that’s who. And, listen up, the NFL ain’t kidding. Those guys mean business. . . . storm troopers wearing uniforms carrying the label ‘NFL Trademarks’ were busy knocking on the doors of the Fleurty Girl T-shirt and the Storyville T-shirt Shop, demanding they cease and desist [...]
Internet Cases: “One of the issues in the case of Autodesk, Inc. v. Dassault Systemes Solidworks was whether Autodesk could claim trademark rights and the letters ‘DWG‘. The .dwg (‘drawing’) file extension is the native file format for Autodesk’s flagship product AutoCAD. Plaintiff Autodesk moved for summary judgment on the trademark issue. The [...]
Lowering the Bar: “I think my iPhone is a great invention, made even greater by the many software applications that you can download for it. But as 95 percent of my cable channels demonstrate, even the greatest inventions can be put to utterly stupid uses. Some of the best-selling iPhone apps fall into [...]
Phoenix Business Gazette: “The owner of a downtown Chandler microbrewery learned the hard way that you can’t name beer after the Arizona State University mascot. Sun Devil Ale has been a hit at San Tan Brewing Co. for a couple of years, said owner and brewmaster Anthony Canecchia. But a strongly worded letter [...]
AM Law Daily: “It’s one of the most chuckle-inducing trademark claims in recent memory: The North Face Apparel Corp. has sued 19-year-old University of Missouri freshman James Winkelmann for trademark infringement and dilution. According to its motion filed in December in the U.S. district court for the eastern district of Missouri, The North [...]
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