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Category Archives: Trademark
In addition to trademarks and service marks, the US Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) also offers protections for trade dress. Trade dress is the appearance of a product; it includes the design and elements that make up the overall image of the product as the consumer sees it. It has to be the non-functional aspects of the product or its packaging, since the functional portions fall under the domain of patent law. Examples of trade dress include: color combinations, shapes and how graphics or words appear on the product or its packaging. Whether the PTO protects trade dress is a determination like that made for regular trademarks. The trade dress has to be distinctive. It can either be inherently distinctive (think of fanciful or arbitrary trademarks), or it might have acquired distinctiveness through secondary meaning. Inherently distinctive trade dress includes the décor of a restaurant or the shape of bottles….
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Trademark distinctiveness is the measure by which a court will determine whether you have a valid trademark. In a post last week, we mentioned the strong versus weak trademarks. Today, we discuss the scale that courts often use when determining where a trademark falls. At the top of the scale are strong trademarks like fanciful or arbitrary trademarks which are creative and unique. Trademarks like Kodak, Verizon and Polaroid are fanciful because they have no meaning aside from that which their companies gave them. Arbitrary trademarks are those like Apple, because the word “apple” has no connection with consumer electronics and computers whatsoever. The link between the two is thus purely arbitrary. Fanciful and arbitrary trademarks easily qualify for trademark protection. Next down the trademark scale are suggestive and descriptive trademarks. Suggestive marks are not quite as creative as the prior types, but usually do merit some type of trademark…
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One electronics item that is likely to appear on many people’s Christmas lists is the new Kindle Fire, Amazon’s tablet version of its Kindle e-book reader. The Kindle Fire came out just two weeks ago, but with a price of $199, some think it could already top five million sales before the end of the year. Industry followers also think it might be a strong competitor to the previously untouchable Apple iPad. That may be one reason underlying Apple’s decision to amend its lawsuit against Amazon over phrases like “app store.” Apple originally sued Amazon back in March on trademark infringement grounds for Amazon’s use of the word “appstore.” Apple amended its lawsuit to refer to new advertisements for the new Kindle Fire, which promote that the device can use the “Amazon Appstore.” Apple noted that advertisements originally had “Amazon Appstore for Android” (Android is the operating system from Google…
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Posted in Intellectual Property, Trademark
Tagged Amazon, android, apple, Christmas, google, kindle fire, los angeles business litigation attorney, Microsoft
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