Articles Tagged with trademark

Facebook, online advertising agency adSage, and a web-based wholesaler of Chinese goods are named as defendants in a new class-action trademark lawsuit  accusing them of enabling the placement of, or placing ads for, counterfeit NFL apparel on the social network. (read it below)

Inkies Sports, Inc. d/b/a Krystal’s NFL Shoppe, a New Mexico-based retail store that only sells “officially licensed NFL merchandise” filed suit. Krystal’s charges that a litany of ads on its Facebook page offer competing, counterfeit merchandise at prices that can be 80% – 90% below the MSRP of an authentic, officially licensed NFL jersey.

But should Facebook and advertising agencies be held accountable for alleged wrongdoings of third party advertisers accused of hawking cheaper counterfeit goods? Prior case law suggests not.

Two years ago a federal appeals court held that eBay was not liable to Tiffany, Inc. for trademark infringement or dilution by offering Tiffany goods for sale that third parties listed for sale. It sent the case back to a lower court to further examine Tiffany’s false advertising claim, and determine whether extrinsic evidence showed that advertisements misled or confused consumers about Tiffany products offered for sale. The U.S. District Court ultimately ruled that eBay was not liable for false advertising, since it failed to obtain survey data showing that a substantial portion of consumers were misled.

For several months, Facebook has reportedly been developing and testing a “Want” button, to supplement its ubiquitous “Like” button. Just last week, Facebook announced that several companies will be testing the new “Want” button and showed what the button would look like.

On October 12, shortly after the release of its new highly anticipated “Want” button, Facebook was sued by a company called CVG-SAB LLC for alleged trademark infringement and other claims over its “Want” marks, including U.S. Trademark No. 4,200,861 and No. 3,923,229, among others. The company, better known by the name under which it does business—Want—operates a social and interactive site that connects people with products they have, like, or desire.

The complaint alleges that “Facebook introduced a WANT Button for services that are effectively the same as, or at least closely related to, Plaintiff’s WANT Button services.” It further argues that Facebook’s use of the button will and has already caused confusion and violates the federal Lanham Act, Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act, and state common law.

Last Tuesday, The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) upheld a decision to deny Apple’s trademark application to register its music feature mark that’s used on iPhones and other Apple products.  The reason?  The mark was confusingly similar to another mark that’s now owned by MySpace.  Both marks consist of two musical eighth notes on an orange background.  MySpace’s mark was originally issued to iLike, a music service that let users download and share music with each other.  However, MySpace bought iLike in 2009, and closed it down a few years later.

Pinterest filed a complaint at the end of August in the Northern District of California against Qian Jin of Nanjing, China, for cyberpiracy, trademark infringement and false designation of origin, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.  Specifically, Pinterest claims that Qian purchased dozens of “infringing” domain names that are nearly identical and confusingly similar to pinterest.com, and uses them purely for online advertisements.  Pinterest also alleges that Qian applied to register PINTEREST and PINTERESTS as trademarks in the United States in bad faith, stating that he had full knowledge of Pinterest’s brand and services.

On July 19th, Rick Quereshi filed a Notice of Opposition against Twitter’s application for the mark TWEET.  Although Twitter applied for trademark protection of TWEET back on April 16, 2009, and the application was published for opposition later that year, Quereshi opposes the registration for the following reasons: 1) Twitter filed its application under an intent to use basis, yet no Allegation of Use has been filed to date; 2) Twitter has not used the TWEET mark in commerce with the identified classes of services from the application; and 3) Quereshi has been openly and notoriously using the TWEET mark in commerce via a mobile computing device since July 23, 2009.  Thus, under the doctrine of common law, Quereshi claims ownership of the mark TWEET due to its prior senior use.

Here is a rundown of October’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Onward blog and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for October 2011

1. Dennis Chen, 1,360 points, 28 answers
2. Tanner Woods Pittman, 500 points, 10 answers
3. Rodney John Alberto, 910 points, 21 answers
4. Andrew Bresalier, 475 points, 17 answers
5. David Philip Shapiro Esq., 450 points, 9 answers
6. Paul Stanko, 400 points, 8 answers
7. J. Richard Kulerski Esq., 300 points, 6 answers
8. Evan Guthrie, 250 points, 5 answers
9. Jennifer Doerrie, 200 points, 6 answers
10. Lenore Tsakanikas, 200 points, 4 answers

Dear Bieber Nation:

We are trademark counsel for Justia Inc., the well-known free legal research resource service provider. Our client is the owner of the Justia service mark, which is protected by federal and state intellectual property laws, including the Lanham Act, and state common law and statute.

It has come to our attention that the teen pop sensations Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez have infringed on our service mark by adopting the celebrity couple moniker “Justia,” following in the tradition of pop culture couples such as Brangelina and Bennifer.