“To grant trade-dress protection for Pocket Plus,” the court said, “would be to hand it a monopoly over the ‘best’ portable-pouch design,” which trademark law precludes. In a trade-dress infringement suit by portable pouch maker Pocket Plus against its direct competitor Running Buddy, an Iowa district court’s grant of summary judgment to Running Buddy was…
A district court was too hasty in rejecting the safe distance rule. A federal district court in Detroit must reconsider its decision to allow the Indian maker of an off-road vehicle to release a redesigned product that ostensibly did not infringe the trade dress of the venerable Jeep brand, the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
The district court erred in considering the failure to produce evidence of actual confusion at this preliminary stage, but the error did not affect the outcome. The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware correctly denied a preliminary injunction after it concluded that the trademark holder failed to provide evidence of irreparable harm in the absence…
The district court applied the wrong legal standard for secondary meaning by requiring evidence of specific association rather than a single, anonymous source. In a trademark case between two competing companies that sell oversize Connect 4 games, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held that a trial is needed to decide trade…
A preliminary injunction did not vacate an earlier arbitration award in a long-running dispute over the trademarked family name. In a dispute between real estate businesses over the name “Singh” and “Singh Michigan” in connection with real estate services, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has denied an appeal to block a preliminary injunction…
Pepsi earns reversal of pretrial order that would have required it to stop marketing a new Mountain Dew product. A federal district court was wrong to enjoin Pepsi from continuing to market a canned energy drink under the Mountain Dew line under the name of “rise energy” because the owner of the RISE mark was…
The district court erred by failing to analyze infringement under reverse confusion theory. The federal district court in Miami erred by concluding as a matter of law that Amazon.com, Inc.’s Fire TV television set-top box service was unlikely to be confused with Wreal LLC’s subscription-based adult content video streaming service called FyreTV. The district court…
The 2018 Farm Bill—which carved hemp out of the definition of marijuana—made products containing the Delta-8 THC isomer legal, which meant marks for the products could be federally protected. A manufacturer of e-cigarette and vaping products was entitled to a preliminary injunction barring a wholesaler from selling counterfeit versions of the manufacturer’s “Cake”-branded e-cigarette and…
Manufacturer of “Mystic Tan” machines failed to show consumers were likely to be confused by salon’s use of its own solution in Mystic Tan booths. The federal district court in Akron, Ohio, did not err in finding that a manufacturer of tanning booths under the mark “Mystic Tan” failed to show a likelihood of success…
In a case of first impression, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Madrid Protocol gave a European company priority of right in a trademark even without prior use in commerce. The Ninth Circuit agreed with the California district court that Bacardi’s use of BACARDI UNTAMEABLE for rum did not as a matter of law infringe…
