In the US an intent-to-use (“ITU”) trademark application may be filed by “a person who has a bona fide intention, under circumstances showing the good faith of such person, to use a trademark in commerce” later. 15 U.S.C. § 1051.The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has long maintained that to qualify for a…
A district court rightly enjoined a Wyoming trial lawyer training program from purporting to be the “true board” of a competing program from which it had recently split, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held. But the court of appeals, while upholding the injunction against the splinter academy, found that the…
First Circuit affirmed a decision to dismiss a trademark suit brought by Motus LLC against CarData Consultants Inc. for a lack of personal jurisdiction, and because alleged trademark infringement was not shown to be an intentional tort within the forum state. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a…
Although the federal court stayed its action to allow a state court to determine the scope of certain licenses, the stay could not be reviewed on appeal because it did not effectively end the federal court litigation. A federal court’s decision to temporarily stay a trademark lawsuit in order to allow a state court to…
Substantial evidence supported the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s finding that another company, and not the trademark holder, actually used the mark in commerce. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) correctly determined that a Korean biopharmaceutical company did not use in commerce the mark for a nutritional product that purportedly improves brain performance, the…
On 5 November 2021, the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court (the Court) issued a ruling between Kejser Sausage ApS (‘Kejser Sausage’) and Keyser KBH ApS among others (‘Keyser’). The case concerned Kejser Sausage’s gourmet hot dog stand in Copenhagen, which used the trademark ‘Kejser Sausage’. Elsewhere in Copenhagen, Keyser used the name ‘Keyser Social’…
Unregistered rights are protected by the law of passing off in the UK. In the recent decision of the IPEC in Stone v Wenman, the court reiterated and applied some key principles in the law of passing off. The Claimant in the case, a spiritual author and holistic therapist, applied for and registered the mark…
A decision of the German Federal Patent Court dated 13 September 2021 (Case 26 W (pat) 20/20) shows the sometimes thin line between likelihood of confusion and exploitation of the reputation when earlier reputed marks are involved. The mark MARBO RED was filed as German national mark in relation to liquids and flavors for electronic…
The Board provided no support for the notion that a registrant has priority as to a specific service it was second to offer just because it was first to offer a different service that is a species of a genus that covers both specific services. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s priority determination, which formed…
Previously on the Kluwer Trademark Blog We have amply reported about the Gömböc case before. If you have missed the previous episodes, you may read our post on the request for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU by the Kúria, the Supreme Court of Hungary, and our contribution about the preliminary ruling of the CJEU…
