trademark
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Who Do You Associate “BorderFest” With?
There’s an interesting trademark ownership fact pattern as described by a Texas state appeals court in Vera v. City of Hidalgo. I find it interesting in two ways. First, there is no mention of the statutory or common law basis for the claim. It’s characterized as ownership of a cultural festival name, but the court… Continue reading
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What’s a “Trolley Pub,” You Ask?
I’m SO glad you did, because I can tell you all about the Trolley Pub® transport services – note the care with which I’ve used the term as a trademark, although I will dispense with any effort to use it in adjective-noun form from now on. The Trolley Pub is a pedal-powered street trolley for… Continue reading
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I Think I Heard the Phone Ringing …
John Welch put in the call, and I’ll pick up. If you didn’t read his post on Emerald Cities Collaborative, Inc v. Roese, go read it now. Section 10 of the Lanham Act limits the assignability of intent-to-use trademark applications. One can assign an ITU application only after the Amendment to Allege Use or the… Continue reading
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Tolerated Infringement
A trademark ownership dispute generally means taking a very mushy set of facts and deciding who has the superior claim. Generally, avoiding likelihood of confusion is the paramount interest, so the outcome will mean that one party will have to cease its use. But sometimes courts allow what I call “tolerated infringement,” concurrent uses that… Continue reading
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Round and Round
We have one of my favorite things, a chain of title case, and one about a band name to boot. Usually band name cases are pretty ugly, about a bunch of people getting together without any legal formalities. But this is not that case. We have the 80’s glam band RATT (official website – or… Continue reading
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Never Underestimate the Value of Section 7
We have a case at the intersection of band names and zombie marks, clearly one for which the melody lingers on. In 1997 there was a jam session at SXSW that included the band Los Lobos. In 1998 some of the SXSW performers created a Grammy award-winning album called Los Super Seven; petitioner Daniel Goodman… Continue reading
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The Subsidiary Standing In
Lately we’ve been seeing an increasing number of trademark cases that revolve around the relative rights of different members of the same enterprise: a family of companies asserting a family of marks theory in Wise F&I v. Allstate Ins. Co., different chapters of the Salvation Army allowed to register similar trademarks in In re The… Continue reading
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Update: All the Wrong Reasons
Update: I previously reported on Sebastian Brown Prods. LLC v. Muzooka Inc., a fairly routine trademark priority dispute with a troubling holding. In it, the district court wrote out the last sentence of Section 10 of the Lanham Act, essentially holding that an intent-to-use application cannot be assigned until the trademark is in use. As… Continue reading
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Cutting to the Chase
Props to the bankruptcy court in the Eastern District of North Carolina for cutting through to the meat of a trademark ownership dispute. We have a company, B6USA, Inc., doing business as “BaySix,” in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. B6USA was formed in March 2005 and was solely owned by Katherine D. Hite, who was also president,… Continue reading
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A Family of Marks with Different Owners
The “family of marks” concept in trademark law is a difficult one to win. We all understand the concept, which is that consumers realize that when trademarks share a similar trait, like restaurant food products that start with “Mc,” the goods come from the same source. Proof of a family of marks is challenging, though.… Continue reading
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