Dueling food options faced off in the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois in Grubhub v. Kroger Co. This case was notable because it had been delegated to a magistrate judge, and the district judge rejected the subsequent report and recommendation. Kroger is a mega-corporation that owns several supermarket chains across the U.S.…
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published a paper called Trademarks and Patents in China: The impact of non-market factors on filing trends and IP systems. It’s an interesting read that examines not only the deluge of applications within China, but also the USPTO’s flood of applications from China: There were 5,200…
Cervejaria Petropolis SA v. Ambev S.A. comes our way from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C., via the TTAB. In this case, Ambev had applied to the USPTO for registration of the mark FUSION, but was barred by the registration of the appellant, Cervejaria Petropolis (CP) for the same mark. CP had inherited the FUSION…
The District Court of Georgia recently waded into the fields of linguistics and statistics in Reinalt-Thomas Corporation , d/b/a Discount Tire v. Mavis Tire Supply, LLC. Reinalt-Thomas Tire Corporation (RTC) sued Mavis Tire Supply (Mavis) for trademark infringement caused by Mavis’ retail outfit, Mavis Discount Tires. The mark, DISCOUNT TIRE, was featured in about a billion…
What a long and winding road it’s been trying to decode the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Examination Guide 4-19, its subsequent revision, and the further revisions that are likely to come. When the original version of 4-19 came out on August 3rd, it caused an uproar in the trademark law community, mostly because of a…
In the recent but now famous U.S. Supreme Court case of Iancu v. Brunetti, the mark in question was, as discussed at oral argument, a homonym of the past participle of a well known profanity — “F.U.C.T.” (which was purportedly meant to be pronounced by its initials). One of the niceties of both the oral argument and…
Recently, a client using a form agreement we had drafted told me that a Big, Important Customer had wanted to make changes to the agreement. It was “just boilerplate” – not financial – so the client made the changes without conferring with counsel. The Customer’s legal department said that they wanted the client, an entertainment service…
A client of mine recently received an email from someone saying that since the 1990s, he had been using the same trademark she’s using now, so she should stop using it. The two trademarks were not exactly the same, but they were very similar, and for related goods and services. However, I wouldn’t recommend my client…
So you’ve just gotten your U.S. trademark registered. Congratulations! Now there are some things you should know… 1. The trademark needs to be maintained. Between the 9th and 10th year after registering your trademark, and every 10 years thereafter, you must file a combined “Declaration of Use and Application for Renewal.” This might seem like a…