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Category: Trademark

Justice Bryer on why booking.com shouldn’t be registered as trademark

The question at issue here is whether a term that takes the form “generic.com” is generic in the ordinary course. In the Breyer’s view, appending “.com” to a generic term ordinarily yields no meaning beyond that of its constituent parts. Because the term “Booking.com” is just such an ordinary “generic.com” term it is not eligible for trademark registration.

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First amendment protection for trademark parody

VIP Products sells the “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” dog toy, which resembles a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Black Label Tennessee Whiskey, but has light-hearted, dog-related alterations. For example, the name “Jack Daniel’s” is replaced with “Bad Spaniels,” “Old No. 7” with “Old No. 2,” and alcohol content descriptions with “43% POO BY VOL.” and “100% SMELLY.”

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Whether there is a nearly per se rule against trademark protection for a “generic.com” term?

A generic name – the name of a class of products or services – is ineligible for federal trademark registration. Booking.com, an enterprise that maintains a travel-reservation website by the same name, sought federal registration of marks including the term “Booking.com.”

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Googles v Google

In 1995, Steven Silvers created the Googles brand. Two years later, he registered the Googles trademark and the internet domain name www.googles.com. The website launched in 1998 as a children’s education and entertainment website. That year, the search engine Google adopted the Google name. Subsequently, in 2005, Silvers sued Google for trademark infringement.

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Willfulness of infringement as precondition to award

A plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit is not required to show that a defendant willfully infringed the plaintiff’s trademark as a precondition to a profits award

The Lanham Act provision governing remedies for trademark violations, makes a showing of willfulness a precondition to a profits award in a suit under §1125(c) for trademark dilution, but §1125(a) has never required such a showing. Reading words into a statute should be avoided, especially when they are included elsewhere in the very same statute.

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A trademark cannot be separated from the goodwill of a business

An attempt to simultaneously sell a restaurant and license associated intellectual property has led to ten years of litigation in state and federal court. Michael Shwartz and his family owned and operated the Camellia Grill restaurant on Carrollton Avenue (the “Carrollton restaurant”) for decades. He operated the business – the single restaurant – through a wholly owned corporation, Camellia Grill, Inc. In 1999, Shwartz formed CGH for the sole purpose of owning federally registered Camellia Grill trademarks.

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Russian patent service deprived 19 companies of the right to use brand under the place of origin

In Russia there is famous natural spring – Essentuki. The Russian mineral water under the brand Essentuki is produced there. Only couple manufacturers can use this brand simply because they have productions in Essentuki. They manufacture bottled water and sell it under the brand “Essentuki”. But it does not mean that other companies don’t want to use the known brand. They also produce water, despite the fact that their manufacturing located far from Essentuki.

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