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Question: Where can I find federal trademark registrations?
Answer: The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) keeps the US federal registry of trademarks. It has an online search capability, TESS, which contains more than 3 million pending, registered and dead federal trademarks. This database may not be complete. One should check the News page to see how current the information actually is. Be aware: not all trademarks are contained in the US federal register. There are state trademarks, unregistered (common law marks) and foreign marks as well. A mark does not have to be registered to be valid.
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Question: What is the difference between a trademark and a service mark?
Answer: Trademarks refer to goods and products, that is, physical commodities which may be natural or manufactured or produced, and which are sold or otherwise transported or distributed. Service marks refer to intangible activities which are performed by one person for the benefit of a person or persons other than himself, either for pay or otherwise. Because the legal rights are essentially the same, the term "trademark" is frequently used to refer to both types of marks. To learn about other types of marks, see Chapter 100 of the USPTO's Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure. To tell whether something is a good or a service, see 37 C.F.R. ?6.1.
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Question: What do these registration numbers mean? or Why don
Answer: Do not be led astray by the registration numbers: trademark rights in the United States arise from use of the mark in commerce, not from registering. However, both state and federal law can provide relief from trademark infringement.
If your opponent has registered its mark on the Patent & Trademark Office
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Question: Can the owner of a foreign trademark make any claim against me?
Answer: Trademark rights are limited to the territory of the government that grants them. The owner of a French trademark, for example, cannot block someone else from using the same term in New York. However many courts around the world have held that they have authority to block Internet material because it "invades" their territory. Can a foreign court order be enforced against you? Maybe. If you have assets in that country, they could be seized. If you visit that location, you could be arrested. If your website host has assets in the foreign jurisdiction, however, the host might delete your material to avoid liability. Domain names registered in certain TLDs (such as .com, .org and .net) can be lost to foreign mark owners under the UDRP, the special ICANN-imposed dispute procedure which protects every trademark owner in every country. If the French trademark owner also has a US mark, then it can sue you in US courts, but only under the US mark rights and only for the kind of activity that would be an infringement under US trademark laws. US law protects free speech rights much more strongly than most foreign nations. The truth is that anyone can make a claim even if a court would immediately reject it. The mere threat of a claim is often enough to cause the person receiving the threat to give up when s/he doesn't understand his rights.
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Question: Where can I find state trademark law?
Answer: Each state has its own laws governing use of trademarks within its borders. To locate the trademark laws of the 50 states, use the Legal Information Institute links. Both legislation and court opinions create trademark rights and remedies. If marks are used in interstate commerce, then federal law will also apply.
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Question: What are "common law" rights in a trademark?
Answer: Common law rights are those that are recognized by courts as a matter of traditional equitable principles and fairness, even when there is no statute or other law that has been enacted by the legislative branch of government to cover the situation. It also arises from the leeway that judges have in interpretating the language of the written laws when the meaning is not clear. Common law is often known as "judge-made" law. Common law is learned by reading the actual decisions made by courts.
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Question: What is "goodwill"?
Answer: Goodwill is a business or trademark owner's image, relationship with customers and suppliers, good reputation, and expectation of repeat patronage. It is the value a trademark owner builds in a brand.
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Question: What is the bare minimum of trademark law that I have to understand to decipher this C&D?
Answer: Your opponent should say that your mark is causing consumer confusion or is likely to cause consumer confusion. Or it should mention it's famousness and complain of dilution or tarnishment. (If the C&D does not say this, then no trademark claim may actually exist, and you can rest assured that your opponent is engaging in scare tactics or has hired a highly incompetent attorney). A mark protects more than identical copying, it extends to anything that is confusingly similar, even if it isn't exactly the same. Functioning in a quasi-magical talisman-like capacity, trademarks designate the source or quality of goods or services. For this reason, the law protects against confusion in the market place by ensuring that marks on the same or similar products or services are sufficiently different. The law also protects famous marks against dilution of value and tarnishment of the reputation of the goods or services on which it appears or the source of those products, regardless of any confusion. You can roughly assess the validity of your opponent?s claim of confusion by classifying the marks involved. A trademark can fall into one of 5 categories. It can be: (1) fanciful; (2) arbitrary; (3) suggestive; (4) descriptive; or (5) generic. Not all of these varieties of marks are entitled to the same level, or indeed any level, of trademark protection. A fanciful mark is a mark someone made up; examples include KODAK or H?AGEN-DAZS. An arbitrary mark is a known term applied to a completely unrelated product or service; for instance, AMAZON.com for an online book-store cum one-stop shopping site or APPLE for computers. Fanciful and arbitrary marks are considered strong marks and garner substantial trademark protection. A suggestive mark is one that hints at the product, but which requires an act of imagination to make the connection: COPPERTONE for sun tan lotion or PENGUIN for coolers or refrigerators are examples. Suggestive marks are also strong marks and receive protection. A descriptive mark, predictably, describes the product: HOLIDAY INN describes a vacation hotel and FISH-FRI describes batter for frying fish. Descriptive marks do not receive any trademark protection unless their user has used them in commerce and has built up secondary meaning. "Secondary meaning" occurs when consumers identify the goods or services on which the descriptive term appears with a single source. In other words, if consumers know that HOLIDAY INN hotels are all affiliated with a single source, then the mark has secondary meaning and receives trademark protection. Finally, generic marks simply designate the variety of goods involved: for example, "cola" used on soft drinks and "perfume" on perfume are both generic terms. Generic marks never receive any trademark protection; they are free for everybody to use. (Keep in mind, though, that "Cola" on a nightclub is arbitrary, and therefore receives protection). If your opponent is complaining that you have used the word "bakery" for a bake shop or "car" for a car repair shop, then you can safely guess that the c & d is baseless. On the other hand, if your opponent is concerned about the fact that both of you use of the term "Sweet Pickles" on alpaca sweaters, then the c & d may have some merit. There are a few more wrinkles as well. Some marks are word marks (text only) and others are design marks (images which may or may not include text). Design marks do not provide independent protectin for the text incorporated in the design. So if the mark is only a design mark, it doesn't prevent others from using the text so long as they don't copy the design elements.
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Question: What is trademark infringement?
Answer: Although different courts have different tests, the central concept is confusion in the marketplace. The law protects against consumer confusion by ensuring that the marks on the same or similar products or services are sufficiently different. A plaintiff in a trademark infringement case generally must prove 1) it possesses a valid mark; 2) that the defendant used the mark; 3) that the defendant used the mark in commerce, "in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution or advertising "of goods and services; and 4) that the defendant used the mark in a manner likely to confuse consumers.
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Question: What are the limits on dilution?
Answer: The Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 (FTDA, 15 U.S.C. 1125) prohibits the commercial use of a famous mark if such use causes dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark. A mark may be diluted either by "tarnishment" or "blurring." Tarnishment occurs when someone uses a mark on inferior or unwholesome goods or services. For example a court found that a sexually explicit web site using the domain name "candyland.com" diluted by tarnishment the famous trademark "CANDY LAND" owned by Hasbro, Inc. for its board games. Blurring occurs when a famous mark or a mark similar to it is used without permission on other goods and services. The unique and distinctive character of the famous mark to identify one source is weakened by the additional use even though it may not cause confusion to the consumer. The following uses of a famous mark are specifically permitted under the Act: 1) Fair use in comparative advertising to identify the goods or services of the owner of the mark.
2) Noncommercial uses of a mark.
3) All forms of news reporting and news commentary. In addition, the courts have differed as to what constitutes a "famous" mark under the FTDA. In some cases the courts have said that the famousness requirement limits the Act to a very small number of very widely known marks. Other courts, however, have accepted lesser-known marks as PANAVISION, WAWA and EBONY as being famous and yet others have said that merely being famous in one's product line is sufficient. Many states also have antidilution laws protecting mark owners.
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Question: What is this laundry list of things the C&D says will happen if I don't obey?
Answer: Your opponent may describe a parade of horribles to demonstrate with exquisite detail what it will do to you unless you capitulate. This list generally includes, but is not limited to:
(1) ceasing use of the allegedly infringing mark or surrendering the domain name;
(2) rendering an accounting;
(3) posting corrective advertising;
(4) obtaining an injunction;
(5) recovering costs and fees. Though these things sound awful, they are not medieval tortures (although that may be a function of the fact that Torquemada never thought of them). Ceasing use of the mark is self-explanatory: your opponent wants you to stop using the mark. Your opponent might also ask you to surrender your domain name if they believe the domain name causes (or is likely to cause) confusion with their trademark. For example, under ICANN rules (the UDRP), you may have to surrender your domain name if the following three conditions are satisfied:
(1) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to your opponent?s;
(2) you have no legitimate right or interest in the name (in other words, you are not using the name to conduct a bona fide business or for non-commercial fair use purposes); and
(3) your name is registered and used in bad faith. An accounting basically means that you disclose the following information to your opponent:
(1) the date you began using the allegedly infringing mark;
(2) the names of individuals who knew of the use when it began;
(3) the amount of traffic at your web site or business at your store; and
(4) your profits and revenues during the time you used the allegedly infringing mark. Corrective advertising means you give notice to the public that you were using a mark confusingly similar to your opponent?s, and that you are not affiliated with your opponent. An injunction is a judicial order to do something. An injunction can prevent you from using the allegedly infringing trademark. Some provisions of the Lanham Act permit a trademark holder to recover attorney?s fees and court costs from an infringer. That your opponent has listed these various remedies does not mean that it is entitled to them; do not confuse the smorgasbord of legal options with your opponent?s right to inflict any of them on you.
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Question: Why do trademark owners worry about meta tags?
Answer:
A meta tag on a Web page stores key words describing the Web site to a search engine for use when someone searches for one of those keywords. Some courts have held that it is trademark infringement when one company uses another
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Question: What defenses are there to trademark infringement or dilution?
Answer:
Defendants in a trademark infringement or dilution claim can assert
basically two types of affirmative defense: fair use or parody.
Fair use occurs when a descriptive mark is used in
good faith for its primary, rather than secondary (trademark),
meaning, and no consumer confusion is likely to result. So, for
example, a cereal manufacturer may be able to describe its cereal as
consisting of "all bran," without infringing upon Kelloggs' rights in
the mark "All Bran." Such a use is purely descriptive, and does not
invoke the secondary meaning of the mark. Similarly, in one case, a
court held that the defendant's use of "fish fry" to describe a batter
coating for fish was fair use and did not infringe upon the plaintiff's
mark "Fish-Fri." Zatarain's, Inc. v. Oak
Grove Smokehouse, Inc., 698 F.2d 786 (5th Cir. 1983). Such uses are
privileged because they use the terms only in their purely descriptive
sense.
Some courts have recognized a somewhat different, but closely-related,
fair-use defense, called nominative use. Nominative use occurs when use
of a term is necessary for purposes of identifying another producer's
product, not the user's own product. For example, in a recent case, the
newspaper USA Today ran a telephone poll, asking its readers to vote for
their favorite member of the music group New Kids on the Block. The New
Kids on the Block sued USA Today for trademark infringement. The court
held that the use of the trademark "New Kids on the Block" was a
privileged nominative use because: (1) the group was not readily
identifiable without using the mark; (2) USA Today used only so much of
the mark as reasonably necessary to identify it; and (3) there was no
suggestion of endorsement or sponsorship by the group. The basic idea
is that use of a trademark is sometimes necessary to identify and talk
about another party's products and services. When the above conditions
are met, such a use will be privileged. New Kids on the Block v. News America
Publishing, Inc., 971 F.2d 302 (9th Cir. 1992).
Finally, certain parodies of or using trademarks may be permissible if they are not too directly tied to commercial use. The basic idea here is that
artistic and editorial parodies of trademarks serve a valuable critical
function, and that this critical function is entitled to some degree of
First Amendment protection. The courts have adopted different ways of
incorporating such First Amendment interests into the analysis. For
example, some courts have applied the general "likelihood of confusion"
analysis, using the First Amendment as a factor in the analysis. Other
courts have expressly balanced First Amendment considerations against
the degree of likely confusion. Still other courts have held that the
First Amendment effectively trumps trademark law, under certain
circumstances. In general, however, the courts appear to be more
sympathetic to the extent that parodies are less commercial, and less
sympathetic to the extent that parodies involve commercial use of the
mark.
So, for example, a risqu? parody of an L.L. Bean magazine advertisement (L.L. Beam's "Back to School Sex Catalog") was found not to constitute infringement. L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc., 811
F.2d 26, 28 (1st Cir. 1987). Similarly, the use of a pig-like
character named "Spa'am" in a Muppet movie was found not to violate
Hormel's rights in the trademark "Spam." Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Prods., 73
F.3d 497 (2d Cir. 1996). On the other hand, "Gucchie Goo" diaper
bags were found not to be protected under the parody defense, Gucci Shops, Inc. v. R.H. Macy & Co., 446 F.
Supp. 838 (S.D.N.Y. 1977). Similarly, posters bearing the logo
"Enjoy Cocaine" were found to violate the rights of Coca-Cola in the
slogan "Enjoy Coca-Cola", Coca-Cola Co. v. Gemini Rising, Inc., 346 F. Supp. 1183 (E.D.N.Y. 1972). In short -- although the courts recognize a parody defense, the precise contours of that defense are difficult to outline with any precision.
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Question: What does the "reservation of rights" language mean? What are they "waiving" at me?
Answer: Many C&Ds will say something like, "This letter shall not be deemed to be a waiver of any rights or remedies, which are expressly reserved." This is just legalese for saying, "Even if you do what we ask in this letter, we can still sue you later." The language is standard; do not be alarmed. Litigation is extremely unpleasant, and unless your opponent is irrational (always a distinct possibility, of course), it will not bring litigation after it has obtained what it wants.
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