On My Mind Blog

The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board  has decided a ”threshold legal issue” as to the registrability of a multiple color mark for product packaging.

So you’ve gone through the process of registering your trademark or service mark.  Now what should you do? 

Here are some guidelines on how to use your registered mark to best legal advantage.

Traditional lawyer demand letters can backfire.

You want your lawyers to be strongly assertive when you believe that your trademark rights are being used in an infringing or generic way.  But formal demands that the improper activity must cease have, on occasion, been posted to social media and ridiculed there, or have just been ineffective.

When a company decides to discontinue the primary use of a mark, the company nevertheless may wish to maintain its exclusive right to use that mark because the mark may continue to be associated with the company.  

Despite any ideological differences, nearly all Americans can agree that the past twelve months have been a boom time for political catchphrases — Covfefe, anyone?  But can a third party stick a political catchphrase on a t-shirt or coffee mug and obtain a trademark registration? 

The exclusive right to use an arguably descriptive trademark or service mark can be strengthened by obtaining a federal trademark registration and by filing a declaration of incontestability, when available.

How you can identify a “merely informational matter” and what you can do if it is refused registration.

How can competitors learn your import/export trade secrets? And how can you learn theirs? 

It is possible to register something other than a word, slogan or logo as a trademark in the U.S.

The rules for using intellectual property as collateral can be counter-intuitive.