A search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) trademark database reveals that in 2020, a single attorney named Elizabeth Yang filed over 8,000 proposed trademarks. This number ...is surprising in and of itself, but the proposed marks are perhaps even more unusual. In general, companies developing new trademarks seek marks that are clear and memorable, that suggest something about the goods with which they're associated. Indeed, trademark lawyers sometimes clash with marketing experts, who want marks so descriptive of the goods they sell as to be unprotectable under trademark law. But the marks filed by Yang include LJXOAIEU for hair clips, QIANDLEE for apparel, JANRSTIC for headphones, and AEZLHJYA for jewelry. These words are not close to any in English, and the applications make clear that they have no meaning in any other language either.
Analysis.221 A. The Dangers of War Through Intellectual Property.221 B. Applying International Trademark Law.224 1. "2 Modern international trademark policy is governed by the Paris Convention, the ...Madrid Protocol, and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).3 This extensive body of international policy relies heavily upon the doctrine of territoriality, meaning that trademarks exist under the laws of the countries in which they are registered.4 The doctrine does provide some advantages, but it also leads to enforcement issues-especially in circumstances of war and other hostile global political events. Some have taken the opportunity to apply for as many marks as possible.18 Some Russian citizens believe that if foreign corporations are leaving the country willingly, there is no one to stop them from taking the marks of such corporations.19 This attitude proves that some citizens rely on the Russian government to uphold policies that disregard both domestic and federal trademark law.20 There is also a consumer sentiment in Russia that Western corporations cashed in on the Russian people just to later abandon them.21 Some have used such reasoning to justify trademark infringement in an attempt to preserve the goods and services the Russian people have grown used to.22 B. Russian Trademark Law As Russia has transitioned away from communism and towards a free-market economy, its trademark policy has undergone significant changes.23 Russia's intellectual property law exists solely on the federal level,24 and utilizes a first-to-register system that allows mark holders to register marks in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.25 Russian trademark law grants an exclusive right to use marks that are registered through the State Patent Office of the Russian Federation (Rospatent)26 Russian trademark applications are refused registration if the applicant mark is "generic, lacks distinctiveness, is likely to create confusion with a current or previously filed mark, ... or reproduces a title, name, or portrait of a renowned person or character without consent. "35 Russia has a spotty history of enforcing the rights of well-known marks and applying the well-known mark protections available under the Paris Convention.36 In 1995, the Russian Patent and Trademark Organization declined to provide trademark registration to the United States vodka producer, Smirnoff, because a Russian entrepreneur filed for the trademark one month before the United States mark-holder filed in Russia.37 Smirnoff argued that its mark was an internationally recognized well-known mark that would warrant protection under article 6bis of the Paris Convention.38 But the presiding Russian court elected not to grant the mark well-known mark protections.39 The Starbucks mark has a storied history in Russia and represents an example of how Russia's treatment of well-known marks has improved over time.40 The Starbucks Corporation registered its trademark in Russia in 1997 but did not open any stores for several years.41 In 2002, a Russian citizen, Zuykov, filed for cancellation of the mark and then attempted to register the Starbucks mark as his own and sell it to the Starbucks for $600,000.42 "In 2002, the Russian Federation amended their trademark law to include protection for well-known trademarks," expanding upon protections already in place through the Paris Convention.43 Starbucks used this policy to bring an action in Russian court to cancel Zuykov's registration 44 The Starbucks case serves as an example that, "as the Russian trademark office and the Russian courts have continued to enforce the rights of well-known trademarks, the trademark piracy business that was once flourishing in Russia has dwindled, and it appears to be more difficult for third parties to register wellknown marks owned by multinationals.
This Paper identifies and analyses the theoretical underpinnings of trademark law in the light of decisions of the Supreme Court of India (here in after, the Court). Outcome of analysis is four-fold. ...One, only the Utilitarian Theoryhas been invoked by the Court and that too not explicitly but only by implication to justify trademark law. Two, judicial ratiocination mainly hinges on two grounds that trademark law maximizes happiness by directing unwary customer to the source of goods or services, and minimizes the pain of unwary customer by protecting her from actual or likely deception or confusion as to the source of goods or services. Three, protection of exclusive right of trademark holder in the trademark is merely a means necessary to promote social good in general and interest of unwary customer in particular. Four, judicial invocation of publici juris is designed to pre-empt tragedy of commons. At the end, Paper develops an argument that the Court should have applied judicially manageable standards to rigorously scrutinize theoretical underpinnings of trademark law.
The trademark sign ™ was created as an unregulated legal shorthand for trademark protections to be used by the general public. As legal language becomes more integrated in everyday discourse, the use ...of the sign ™ has ranged from being applied to clear, legally protected marks, to parody uses of the sign on a mark, and everything in between. The handful of existing studies on this sign distinguish between ‘genuine’ legally protected marks and ‘fake’ marks, which we find legally presumptive. Using grounded theory, we analyzed written uses of ™ to develop a theory of how the linguistic information encoded the trademark sign affects its interpretation. We theorize that the sign carries information of ownership, branding, and legitimacy; and the incongruity of these features in a particular use lead to the mark's interpretation as parody. A significant advantage of this theory as presented is that it leaves the legal validity of a particular use up to the courts while fully explaining the sign's use in discourse.
•First substantive study of the ‘tm’ sign linguistically.•Description of the use of the tm symbol as it is created and used orthographically, and how it systematically conveys explicit information of legitimacy, branding, and ownership, as rooted in trademark law.•The distinction between ‘genuine’ legal marks and ‘social’ use of the tm symbol is unwarranted based on the use and meaning.•Parody, a better distinction between uses of the sign, are exhibited as mismatches between expected and given information in ownership, branding, or legitimacy.•Use of grounded theory in linguistics to provide a theory of the trademark sign which in turn can signal community affiliation.
Traditional trademarks, such as words and images, have long been the dominant subject of trademark protection. However, the development of modern technology and new marketing methods have influenced ...the increase in applications for non-traditional trademark protection marks. However, the number of registered non-traditional trademarks, both national and supranational, was not large. The reason for that was the graphic display as a condition for the registration of the trademark. This requirement could not be satisfied by those non-traditional signs that are perceived by other senses, and not only by the sense of sight. The abolition of the conditions for graphic representation of the sign, on the other hand, has greatly contributed to the increase in the number of registered multimedia trademarks that can now be represented by video. On the other hand, the abolition of the conditions for the graphic representation of the sign did not open the way for the registration of olfactory, tactile and gustatory trademarks.
Are trademarks ever fanciful? Linford, Jakk
The Georgetown law journal,
03/2017, Letnik:
105, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A fanciful trademark - a made-up word like Swiffer for mops or Xerox for photocopiers - is presumed to neither describe nor suggest any qualities of the product associated with the mark. This ...presumption is consistent with the theory of linguistic arbitrariness: there exists no connection between a given word (tree) and the thing signified by the word (a large woody plant). Because a fanciful mark is assumed to be an empty vessel, meaningless until used as a trademark, it qualifies for protection from first use and receives broader protection against infringement than other categories of trademarks.
Research into sound symbolism challenges the theory of linguistic arbitrariness and thus the accepted gap between fanciful mark and mark-bearing product. Multiple studies demonstrate the existence of sound symbolism - connections between the individual sounds that constitute a given word and the meanings that a reader or listener ascribes to that word. Consumers are more likely to favor a new trademark when trademark meaning links to product type, even if they are not conscious of the link. Marketers often consider sound symbolism when coining a fanciful mark to create such a link. Nevertheless, the law presumes linguistic arbitrariness when it comes to fanciful trademarks.
Courts often assume that adopting a mark similar to a fanciful mark is evidence of bad faith, but a new entrant might reasonably desire to use sounds that convey product information. Overprotecting fanciful trademarks could thus impose unjustified costs on competitors, at least when sound symbolism connects the mark to the product offered for sale. Broad protection for fanciful marks that benefit from sound symbolism may therefore be misguided. Courts should instead engage in a more nuanced inquiry, accounting for sound symbolism when assessing the validity and scope of a fanciful mark.
Learning about the countless manufactured resources that surround us involves learning that they may be categorized according to the identity of their maker (i.e., their brand). Prior work indicates ...that children know some brand names as young as two years but has not examined whether young children understand that these expressions should be extended only to authentic products (i.e., those with a historical link to a particular maker) regardless of their perceptual appearance (i.e., the presence of a familiar trademark). Thirty-two 4-year-olds, 32 6-year-olds and 32 adults participated. Adults and 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, systematically extended familiar brand names from a target product to other products that shared the same maker, even when this extension could not be based on perceptual appearance. By six years, children have begun to understand that a non-obvious historical property – maker identity – underlies the categorization of manufactured objects by brand.
•Examined comprehension of familiar brand names for manufactured resources.•4-year-olds extended brand names based on perceptual cues (familiar trademarks).•6-year-olds and adults extended brand names based on maker identity (authenticity).•Perceptual cues also influenced 6-year-olds' and adults' brand name extensions.•By six years, children know that maker identity underlies brand categorization.
This article answers the question of whether trademark regulations and case law promote the aims of international and EU law regarding the inclusion of persons with disabilities in social and ...economic life, which includes the involvement of persons with disabilities as consumers of goods and services, or whether they generate a conflict between the principles of trademark protection and the accessibility of trademarks for persons with disabilities. Trademark law and its interpretation is developing in parallel with the development of the concept of access and the inclusion of people with disabilities in every sphere of life. Both the content of the legislation and, in particular, trademark decisions fail to take into account the disability perspective, thus the law perpetuates an approach that denies people with disabilities the possibility to be consumers and to distinguish the origin of products to the same extent as non-disabled people. It is possible to introduce changes through minor steps in order not to revolutionise but only to complement the trademark system with a disability perspective, and thus meet the requirements of including people with disabilities in social and economic life.
Well-known brands are frequently imitated, misused, or tampered with. Firms facing these threats routinely turn to the legal system and file trademark infringement lawsuits in an attempt to prevent ...revenue losses and brand equity dilution. In this article, the authors address the largely unexplored issue of brand protection. First, they categorize all major types of trademark infringement. Second, using signaling and prospect theories, they present a conceptual model that outlines the financial consequences of defending a brand in court. The authors test the predictions of this framework using a large sample of trademark infringement lawsuits and find that although investors react negatively in the short term to firms' filing and even to firms' winning such cases, the long-term performance of firms that successfully leverage the legal system to protect their brands is positive.
