Trademark registration generally trumps an unregistered (i.e. common law) use of the same trademark, so says @cyclaw in speaking about trademark registration in Canada. I had tweeted this #trademark question: What happens if you apply for – and get – US federal trademark registration, but later find that someone else has been using the same [...]

A little-appreciated requirement for trademark owners is a duty to monitor and police their trademarks.  This duty applies to owners of unregistered trademarks as much as federal registered marks, since registration is not necessary to claim many trademark rights. What types of activities must be monitored and policed?  Infringement and dilution.  Or in other words, [...]

(Thanks to Neal Seth of Baker Hostetler and Michael Steger of Law Offices of Michael Steger for input on this question.) “Can I register a trademark for my brand?”  That’s typically the first question asked of a trademark lawyer.  The second question – not always asked – might be “Why would I want to?”  Or [...]

Yes, possibly the most important lawsuit since the sad case of the hamburger joint sued by the Washington white shoe law firm, playing now at a theater on Connecticut Avenue. Well, maybe the most important lawsuit in trademark’s hoary world. “Field of Screams” – Maryland version – is the annual Halloween fundraiser put on by [...]

[Thomas Yarnell contributed to research and drafting on this post.] Google’s popular and dominant advertising service, AdWords, allows companies to place auction-style bids on search keywords.  If a company bids the highest amount on a keyword, that company’s ad comes up first when someone searches the keyword.  The company then pays Google on a pay-per-click [...]

An automobile brokerage operating online under the web domains “buy-a-lexus.com” and “buyorleaselexus.com” got sued by Toyota Motor Sales for trademark infringement, first losing in trial court on a trademark “fair use” argument, then winning on appeal.  The case opinion can be found here. The domain name question in trademark is whether and how one can [...]

Sherlock Holmes is still under copyright, even though his author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died almost 80 years ago.  Actually, some of Conan Doyle’s stories are or appear to be under copyright protection in the United States (not in the UK and not elsewhere), by virtue of an oddity in US copyright laws.  Ordinarily, US [...]

Oneok, a natural gas distributor based in Oklahoma, sued Twitter last week for trademark infringement.  Then dropped the case one day later. Oneok claimed that an unidentified third party had operated an account under Oneok’s name and logo (both registered trademarks, evidently) and, more particularly, issued tweets which “had the appearance of being official statements” [...]

Can you trademark a domain name?  Amazon.com is a registered US trademark of the company by the same name, including not just the word “Amazon”; but also the dot com.  There are numerous examples of this, although they have in common the brand value of the name inclusive of the dot com appendage. How many [...]