Tag: trademark

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Cases Intellectual Property

How to Lose a Trademark

When one speaks about trademarks, the familiar adage “use it or lose it” comes to mind. But there is another important principal that can equally endanger your trademark rights: You must police the market, monitor the trademark register and take action to stop infringements, or you may find yourself without a trademark to enforce. Two recent cases demonstrate the importance of this latter principle.

LUSH is the trademark for a global brand of “hand made” cosmetic, fragrance and bath products sold by Cosmetic Warriors Limited (“CWL”), a company founded in England in the mid-1990’s. CWL opened its first Canadian retail store in 1996 and expanded to the United States in 2002. It now operates in excess of 940 stores in 49 countries, including 250 stores in North America, 200 of which are located in the United States. In 2002, it registered the LUSH trademark for use on t-shirts in Canada, but never filed a US registration for apparel. Pinkette Clothing Co. is a California company that, since 2003, has sold women’s clothing under the LUSH mark to retailers in the US and Canada, principally Nordstrom. Pinkette secured a US registration for the LUSH trademark for apparel in 2010. CWL did not oppose the issuance of registration for the mark, although its outside counsel apparently was notified through a trademark watch service of the application’s publication for opposition. In December 2014, CWL applied to register the trademark LUSH in the United States for clothing. When its application was rejected due to Pinkette’s pre-existing registration, it filed an application to cancel Pinkette’s mark. Instead of defending in the cancellation proceeding before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, Pinkette commenced a court action seeking a declaration that it did not infringe CWL’s trademark or, alternatively, that CWL’s failure to oppose Pinkette’s application in 2010 and its subsequent delay in seeking to cancel Pinkette’s registration barred CWL from enforcing its trademark rights against Pinkette. CWL counterclaimed for trademark infringement and to cancel Pinkette’s LUSH trademark registration. After trial, a jury found that Pinkette had infringed CWL’s LUSH trademark and that Pinkette’s registration should be canceled, but it also found that CWL had unreasonably delayed in asserting its claims. The court held that the delay barred CWL’s action and dismissed its claims. On appeal by CWL from the dismissal of its claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that CWL should have known of Pinkette’s usage as early as 2010, when Pinkette’s application for registration was published for opposition, that CWL had not been diligent in asserting its rights, and that Pinkette had been harmed by the delay because, in the interim, it had expended time and resources to develop its LUSH business. As a matter of equity, therefore, CWL would not be permitted to assert its claim either for trademark infringement or for cancellation of the Pinkette mark.

The second case demonstrates what can happen when many uses of a trademark for competitive goods are tolerated by the trademark owner for an extended period. The essential function of a trademark is to identify the source of the goods to which it is applied. Trade dress in the form of the design of a product or its packaging can also serve to identify a source and can serve as a trademark when it does. But if the design does not have a source-identifying function, referred to as “secondary meaning,” the design is not registrable for trade dress protection. When other third parties are permitted to use the design in the market for similar goods, the design cannot achieve the required secondary meaning.

Converse learned that lesson the hard way. In 2013, Converse registered a trademark for the “midsole” design of its Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers, consisting of the toe cap, textured toe bumper and two thin stripes along the side of the sole of the shoe. It claimed common-law trademark rights in the design based upon decades of its use prior to securing its registration. It subsequently filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission against Walmart, Skechers, Highline and New Balance seeking to bar the importation of sneakers it claimed infringed its registered midsole trademark and its common law trademark rights in the design. The International Trade Commission found that there was a likelihood of confusion between the Converse sneakers and the competitors’ sneakers. But the Commission also found that there had been a proliferation of competitors using the same design, on the same goods, sold to the same class of consumers over many years. As a result, the Commission concluded that the design could not be said to identify Converse as the source of the goods and, therefore, its trademark registration was invalid.

The lesson of these cases is clear. Adopting and registering a trademark is only the beginning of your work. To preserve and protect the trademark, you must police the market and assert your rights on a timely basis when you discover infringement by others. If you fail to do so, you may find that your investment in the trademark has been lost.

Credit:  Helene M. Freeman

Categories
Cases Intellectual Property

What’s In A Letter?

Recently, the New Balance footwear company won a landmark $1.5 million trademark decision in the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court, near Shanghai, China. Daniel McKinnon, the New Balance senior counsel for intellectual property, told the New York Times: “If the China marketplace can be thought of as a schoolyard, New Balance wants to make it abundantly clear we are the wrong kid to pick on.”

The schoolyard brawl all started when New Balance alleged that three Chinese brands infringed upon its well-known New Balance “N” trademark. The three Chinese shoemakers, New Boom, New Barlun, and New Bunren, saw fit not only to use similar brand names, but also to trade off of New Balance’s international acclaim by mimicking its slanted “N” design on their shoes. A Suzhou Court cited the defendants’ free-riding, consumer confusion, and market harm as the basis for its ruling in favor of New Balance.

What makes this case important is not only that New Balance was prepared to fight for its rights in China—often a challenging thing to do—but also that it was willing to do so over a single-letter trademark.

A trademark is a source indicator that can convey a range of messages about your brand such as quality, price, taste and reputation—the sometimes obvious and sometimes mysterious factors that, in total, are the goodwill of the brand.
Brand owners often reflect upon the value and protectability of words, names, logotypes, slogans and even colors as trademarks. The victory by New Balance in a famously tough territory tells us that a lot can ride on who is found to own and have the rights to exploit a single letter.

Minimalism is as much a factor in trademark recognition as anywhere else in the broad field of visual expression. Mercedes Benz has made a simple three-pointed star one of the most recognizable marks on earth. In the USA, Louboutin owns the color red for the soles of shoes, and Federal Express owns the truncated version of its mark popularized by the public: FedEx. Take it down even further, and you get marks with one or two letters: PayPal is recognized by two cerulean stylized “P’s” and Facebook by a solitary but consequential byzantine blue lower-case “f”. Uber upgraded its former “U” mark to a modernized “U” enclosed by emerald green.

In fashion, designers have been using single-letter marks for decades. Hermès uses its elegant “H”; and of course, New Balance is using its slanted “N”. A few logos have doubled letters: Gucci has made the twin “G” into a brand; as with the seemingly reflective Tory Burch “T”, the mirrored Fendi “F”, and the interlocking “Cs” of Chanel.

Single-letter marks can be significant in fashion because a single letter can serve not only as a logo, but also as a design that can be emblazoned on clothing, handbags, shoes, etc. Meanwhile, the boom in online retail—where a mark may be only barely visible—has been the basis for the further simplification of marks. The large British online retailer Asos recently abbreviated its trademark to the letter “a,” the better to identify the brand on its mobile app.

 

Credit: Candace R. Arrington

Candace Arrington provides research support as a law clerk to our corporate and business law, intellectual property law and entertainment law practices.

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Cases Federal & State Laws General / Musings Intellectual Property Licensing

Star Athletica: An Unsatisfying End

If you were hoping that following the Supreme Court’s decision in Star Athletica you might learn whether common stripes, chevrons, color blocks and zig zags are sufficiently original to be copyrightable—a question expressly reserved by the Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit– you will be disappointed. On August 10, 2017, the district court permitted Varsity Brands to voluntarily dismiss its copyright infringement action against Star Athletica with prejudice, over the objection of Star Athletica, which wished to pursue its counter-claims seeking to invalidate the Varsity Brands copyrights.

You might well ask, as we did, why after seven years of largely successful litigation, Varsity Brands would be permitted to walk away. Or you might ask, as we also did, why Star Athletica would object to having the suit end with no apparent injunctive or other relief awarded against it. Both are fair questions and the answer to each is unusual: The insurance company that was defending Star Athletica reached a settlement agreement with Varsity Brands, without the participation or approval of Star Athletica. The terms of the settlement are confidential. The only clue is the court’s reservation to Varsity Brands of the right to return to court if it does not receive the payment from the insurer required by the settlement. As far as Varsity Brands is concerned, not only does it get money, but it also avoids the potential for invalidation of its copyrights, having made its point that the two dimensional designs reflected in its uniforms are separable from their utilitarian features and theoretically capable of copyright protection. It now has a stronger threat to hurl at potential competitors.

But what of Star Athletica and its interest in settling its rights to compete with Varsity Brands in the cheerleading uniform market? In the view of the court, Star Athletica receives what is in effect immunity from future claims of copyright infringement related to the copyrights and uniforms at issue in the action. And also in the court’s view, Star Athletica’s counter-claims to invalidate the copyrights were only defenses to the copyright infringement claims and not independent bases for legal action once the threat of copyright liability was removed. And that is the rub: Varsity Brands has many other copyright registrations for which similar challenges to their validity might (or might not) have merit. Because the court did not provide guidance on that fundamental point, competing uniform makers remain exposed to similar infringement claims.

One can’t help feeling that the broader fashion public had an interest in the resolution of the question of whether stripes and chevrons are original when applied to garments. But it is an axiom of federal court litigation that the courts do not decide hypothetical cases or controversies for the edification of the public.

For now, if you are interested in whether stripes can be protected in fashion, you will have to focus on trademarks and not copyrights. There is always Gucci’s suit against Forever 21 for knocking off what it claims is its stripes trademark. And then, too, there is Adidas’ pending suit against Skechers for knocking off its three stripe trademark. The district court in Oregon just decided that Adidas’ trademark infringement suit can proceed.

Credit:  Helene M. Freeman

Categories
Accessories Childrenswear Footwear Intellectual Property Menswear Textiles Womenswear

Keeping Control Over Your Brand

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In the movie A Hard Day’s Night (1964), unscrupulous menswear marketers lure George Harrison into their office, there to assure him that the two new shirts they put into his hands are essential to his self-esteem. When George says the goods are frightful, the head marketer comforts his team that, “within a month, he will be suffering a violent inferiority complex and loss of status because he isn’t wearing one of these ‘nasty’ things.”

The point was that the guiding spirits of the generation of the 1960s formed up against the commercialism and consumerism that were behind marketers’ attempts to pass off “nasty” goods as status symbols for insecure youth. How times have changed. Someone with a device in his pocket that pitches out brands and branding stories faster than summer rain drenches a field views branding and the commercial motives behind it in a much more positive light. Brands ignite consumer interest as never before, and brands win when they have good stories to tell—stories that create interest and become viral once consumers are engaged. Brands are, after all, nothing but good will with consumers, and once that is obtained, the message is spread most effectively by consumers imitating each other and aspiring to what each other has. The bad news that follows from the good is that consumers, in exchanging with each other messages about brands they know, are becoming as important in the control of a brand’s destiny as the brand’s owner—and its marketers.

For that reason, never has the creation and the protection of strong trademarks been more important for the fashion business. The value of the trademarks is applied directly to the bottom line in the form of good will. There are terrific fashion brands that own little else but their trademarks and related domain names—not the factories that make the clothes, not the stores in which they are sold, not even the photocopy machines in the corporate office. What they have are strong trademarks protected throughout the areas of current use and expected operations. The moral of the story: work with your trademark lawyer to develop, as early as possible, a solid and workable trademark protection program, and then stick to it by carefully searching and analyzing all new prospective trademarks and by registering them promptly as soon as the anticipated need arises. What have you to lose by not doing that? Only everything you may have.

Credit:  Alan Behr