John Welch writes over at TTABlog today about the recent refusal of Craigslist’s application to register a trademark for the peace symbol. It is a very interesting post on a not-frequently-seen area of trademark law. While generally a trademark can…
A trademark application will be abandoned by the Trademark Office if a deadline passes without you taking certain action. This can happen, for instance, if the Trademark Office has issued you an Office Action that requires a response, and the…
Today, a basic primer on trademark infringement and an example of something that seems pretty clear. A registered trademark gives the owner the right to prevent anyone from using a mark in a way that is likely to cause confusion….
A few weekends ago I competed at Ironman 70.3 Oceanside in California. Oceanside has some restaurants I’ve not seen anywhere else before, in the country or even in California. One of those was a place called Angelo’s, which served everything…
I saw a designation I’ve not seen before on some packaging at Costco this weekend. We walked down the coffee aisle, and the Starbucks VIA coffee packets were branded with a NEVER BE WITHOUT GREAT COFFEE tagline followed by a…
I have written previously about the difficulties – or at least the special issues – involved in registering a trademark in connection with clothing. There is an unfortunate disconnect between the way the Trademark Office views trademarks on clothing and…
Lance Armstrong’s confession is huge news today, mostly for the fact that it is being made and not so much for what it may or may not contain. Many are calling this an effort to re-brand Lance so that he…
Except in a few cases*, a trademark will not be registered until the mark has been used. The Trademark Office won’t register a trademark unless the applicant provides proof of how the mark is used in commerce. This is a…
Jordon Trapnell guest writes: Trademark law states that any mark that is predominantly a last name cannot be registered as a federal trademark on the Principal Register. The law identifies such a name as “primarily merely” a surname, meaning the…
What are the issues presented by the most recent editions of Triathlete and Lava magazines? Are there any? If so, could they have been avoided? For the record, Lava issued a week or two after Triathlete.