Tag Archives: West Palm Beach Trademark Attorneys
Hashtags Can Qualify for Trademark Protection
The Wall Street Journal recently posted a story about how companies are increasingly seeking trademark protection for hashtags. Hashtags are used on the internet, particularly social media, as a method of communication and information sorting. On some sites, such as Twitter, a hashtag is clickable and will sort all messages pertaining to a certain… Read More »
Seeing Red: What the Fashion World Has Shown Us about Trademarks and Color
One of the most interesting things about trademark law is its flexibility. The law has adapted to provide trademark protection to a wide variety of objects from the mundane, like words or logos, to the unusual, like live animals. One commonly litigated non-traditional trademark is color. While the ability to trademark a combination of… Read More »
What Happens When a Trademark Goes too Far
Trademark law is usually concerned with protecting consumers from fraud. The idea behind it is that each company should get its own logo and name so that consumers know who they are buying from. Yet, sometimes trademark law goes beyond this, and attempts to address other concerns. One area of trademark law where this… Read More »
Supreme Court Clarifies the Power of the Patent and Trademark Office
Although trademark law affects businesses every day, it has the reputation for being something of a niche area of law that many lawyers do not involve themselves with. Consequently, trademark issues rarely end up going before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, it happened twice this term. One of the cases, B&B Hardware v. Hargis… Read More »
Why Small Business Owners Should Care about Trademark Genericide
The law protects trademarks because they function as “source identifiers.” When a person sees a company logo on a product, they know which company is responsible for it. This allows consumers to easily find companies whose products they like, while avoiding those who sell inferior goods. Understanding this purpose of trademark law allows for… Read More »
Likelihood of Confusion in Trademark Law
Trademark law is a complicated field with a variety doctrines and nuances, but the core goal of the law is to prevent consumers from being confused about what company is offering a product or service. That means that in order for a plaintiff to prevail on a trademark infringement claim, they need to show… Read More »
Potential Changes to Attorney’s Fees in Trademark Lawsuits
Each branch of intellectual property has its own statutes and rules, but every so often, decisions in one sphere can bleed over into another. Such a situation might be happening now with regard to a patent law decision that is making ripples in trademark cases. Last year, the United States Supreme Court decided the… Read More »
Functionality: The Line between Patents and Trademarks
Each category of intellectual property deals with a specific type of creation. Copyright protects artistic expression. Patents protect useful inventions and discoveries. Trademarks protect logos and other things that convey the source of commercial goods. The legislature specially tailored each of these classes of intellectual property to suit the type of creation that it… Read More »
