The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) properly refused to register the mark “.SUCKS,” in standard characters and a stylized pixelated font, for failure to function as mark for the applicant’s domain name registry operator services, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. Substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding that consumers…
This case ABP Technology Ltd v Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. & Anor (Rev1) [2021] – EWHC 3096 (Ch) (19 November 2021) concerns two parties using highly similar/identical marks (STEALTH) on identical goods. This article discusses some key takeaway points arising from their dispute, as well as the tactics that the parties used. Both parties were involved…
Traditional limitations on trademarking a personal name give way to free speech interests when it comes to prominent public officials. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board violated the First Amendment rights of a trademark applicant when it denied registration to his t-shirt that disparaged former President Trump, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal…
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…
So, a million years in the future, an alien lands on the moon and sees this footprint. The alien quickly accesses the GWW (Galaxy Wide Web) and discovers that it was left by one astronaut of the little blue world nearby (perhaps worth a visit, according to prior reviews left by other interstellar visitors). The…
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…
Long before appellants wishing to bring appeal cases to the CJEU were obliged to file a separate request for admission of the appeal, access to the Kúria (the Hungarian Supreme Court) was restricted by the Hungarian Civil Procedure Act (Act CXXX of 2016).The Kúria acts as a court of cassation or revision. In general, a…
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…
