Month: July 2012

Under Armour Apparel vs. Body Armor Beverage: Trademark Infringement and the Similarity of Goods Analysis

trademark infringementThe previous Trademark Access blog post discussed a trademark infringement suit between two baseball glove manufacturers.  Rawlings Sporting Goods sponsors the “Rawlings Gold Glove Award” baseball glove manufacturers. Rawlings Sporting Goods sponsors the “Rawlings Gold Glove Award” and owns a US trademark registration for that phrase. Rawlings brought suit against Wilson Sporting Goods claiming that Wilson was creating confusion in the marketplace by outfitting a professional baseball player with a gold glove and thereby infringing on Rawlings’s trademark. In a trademark infringement case like this one, one of the major factors that a court would look at is how similar the goods associated with the marks are to each other. If the goods are unrelated, it is less likely there will be any confusion about the source of goods and less likely there will be infringement.

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Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune: Trademark Lawyers Launch New Online Service

trademark lawyersThe Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune recently ran articles in their online business sections about Trademark Access’s online trademark registration services. The articles may be viewed by clicking here and here respectively.

As stated by the Deseret News article, Perry Clegg, the founder of Trademark Access, was recently elected to be the secretary of the Intellectual Property Section of the Utah State Bar and has been named among the top intellectual property attorneys in Utah as determined by a survey of legal peers conducted by Utah Business Magazine.

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The US Trademark Standard: What Constitutes a Likelihood of Confusion?

us trademarkIf you are a baseball fan, you are probably familiar with the Gold Glove award that is given annually to one player at each position for outstanding field play.  But did you know that the Gold Glove is not actually given out by Major League Baseball, but is awarded by the baseball glove manufacturer Rawlings?  In fact, Rawlings is the registered owner of US Trademark Registration No. 1,945,584 which covers the phrase “Rawlings Gold Glove Award.

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Requirements to Maintain US Federal Trademark Registration

us trademark registrationIf you are successfully able to register your United States federal trademark, you have navigated the trickiest part of the trademark process.  However, you are not completely out of the woods.  Simply because you register a trademark does not mean that it will remain valid and enforceable forever.  For your trademark registration to remain valid or active, you must show the United States Trademark office that you have continued to use the mark in commerce after registration.

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The ® Trademark Registration Symbol and the ™ Trademark Symbol: What’s the difference?

trademark registrationYou are probably familiar with two small symbols commonly displayed after the use of a U.S. trademark, the ® and the ™ symbols. But you may wonder what the difference between them is. These two symbols indicate that the owner of a mark is asserting trademark rights in connection with the mark. These “trademark” symbols are intended as notice or a warning to third parties regarding the type of rights that accompany a mark.

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