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PHYSICIANCARE, when considered in relation to the identified services that provide medical and clinical information from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to physicians in order to provide care for patients, presents a meaning that requires some measure of imagination and mental pause

Judge Desai suggested that the Ninth Circuit should reconsider the holding in Network Automation that keyword bidding and purchasing constitutes a “use in commerce” under the Lanham Act because, without more, “the buyer of keywords does not in any way display a trademark to sell or advertise services.”

Absent a carve-out condition otherwise, a covenant not to sue gives the recipient authority to sell an item, and a resulting authorized sale automatically exhausts the patentholder’s rights and prohibits suit against the buyer, so the Tenth Circuit held

Notably, POP! immediately follows the words HARRY & DAVID. In this location, the term POP!, with its exclamation point, forms an interjection, modifying and linking the preceding words together in a distinct grammatical phrase, HARRY & DAVID POP!

infer from the requirement to deliver COLA labels to Applicant that the parties have an agreement and system to avoid confusion as regards use of WATERLOO for carbonated alcoholic beverages. We find that these provisions are substantively and essentially efforts to avoid actual and future confusion

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California reversed the holding of genericness, but affirmed the holding that SPECTACLES was merely descriptive with inadequate evidence of secondary meaning. Snap Inc. v. Vidal, No. 2:22-cv-00085-SK (C.D. Cal. Sept. 27, 2024). 

the judge in this case "gives the benefit of the doubt to plaintiffs on motions to dismiss, only to hammer them on summary judgment if their evidence doesn’t hold up to scrutiny." 

the complaint in Walgreen Co. v. Walgreen Health Solutions LLC, No. 1:23-cv-17067 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 24, 2024) indicated that attempts to settle matters out of court had been initiated “shortly after” the plaintiffs learned of the alleged infringement. But, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, the district court found that when exactly the plaintiff actually knew of the allegedly infringing use—or if a delay was inexcusable—was unclear and plausibly within the relevant statute of limitations.

A Canadian company, Casa Bonita Foods Inc., filed a trademark application for the CASA BONITA mark for "Tortillas" and snack foods on April 20, 2021. But there were two prior CASA BONITA trademark registrations for "restaurant services." The registrations recently were assigned to The Beautiful H...

It appears that the district court believed patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 to be a threshold inquiry that it had a duty to address—even in the silence of the parties—akin to, for example, subject-matter jurisdiction. But the presumption of validity afforded to patents under § 282 applies equally to all grounds of validity, including the eligibility of the claimed subject-matter

The [Contour patent] claims are directed to a technological solution to a technological problem. The written description discloses improving POV camera technology through specific means of generating high- and low-quality video streams in parallel and transferring a low-quality video stream to a remote device, and the claims reflect this improvement. 

"the Video has a very low degree of 'transformativeness,' if any at all"--noting that the Video “is best described as a wholesale copying of music to accompany a political campaign ad.” The Video does not alter the Electric Avenue song or use Electric Avenue as a vehicle to deliver its satirical message, and “makes no effort to poke fun at the song or Grant.” The Court concluded that the Trump defendants “have offered no justification for their extensive borrowing.” 

Because of the different connotations, CATO and KATO would not engender the same commercial impression to anyone who knows the meaning of either term. For those consumers unfamiliar with either term, KATO would still manifest a different commercial impression, with a more Japanese aura.

The TTAB noted that the origin story of the applied-for "LEATHER MAN LTD. * ESSEX, CT" mark calls to mind the legend of the “old Leather [M]an, … a vagabond [who] was famous for the leather suit of clothes he wore” and who became "well-known" in the neighboring villages and towns of Essex, Connecticut. 

TTAB recently affirmed a Section 2(d) refusal to register the UGLY DOG SALOON mark for “Bar and restaurant services; catering services” (with “saloon” disclaimed), in view of the registered UGLY DOG mark for “alcoholic beverages, namely, distilled spirits; alcoholic cocktail mixes.”

The court also found a hundred examples of misdirected inquiries between "Punchbowl" and "Punchbowl News," out of tens of thousands of queries, were "de minimis" and did not show actual confusion. Furthermore, "Plaintiff has not identified a single customer who purchased (or came close to purchasing) the wrong product as a result of confusion between the parties' services."

[A] reasonable observer would understand that JKL showed the Videos to comment on the willingness of Santos -- a public figure who had recently been expelled from Congress for allegedly fraudulent activity including enriching himself through a fraudulent contribution scheme -- to say absurd things for money.

Although the marks were highly similar, the TTAB held that this is “outweighed by the findings that the services are unrelated, the channels of trade and classes of purchasers do not overlap, and consumers of both Applicant’s and Registrant’s services will exercise more than ordinary care in their purchasing decisions.”

“the evidence suggests that consumers of jewelry will look not just to the NAMASTE component of Applicant’s mark to identify and distinguish the source of the goods, but also to the other parts of the marks, particularly the phrase BY APRIL STOLF in Applicant’s mark, which identifies the designer.”

the Board recently granted a petition for cancellation of Fieldvine's registration on the Supplemental Register for the mark PERMITS.COM for construction permit services based on the prior use of the PERMIT.COM mark by Petitioner State Permits for identical services beginning five years earlier, even though Petitioner State Permits did not prove acquired distinctiveness

The on-sale bar applies when a patentee sells, before the one-year critical date, products made using a secret process.

Fifth Circuit affirmed having "rejected the theory that if a defendant's website targeted the entire United States, it necessarily targeted Louisiana." 

who is given access to such information, and in what numbers, are among the most important factors in assessing both whether the information was generally available and the reasonableness of efforts to maintain its secrecy

retail store activities featuring only a party’s own goods are indeed “services” under trademark law. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Ava Labs, Inc.,

specimen showing the GABBY'S TABLE mark in use with providing “referrals of products for sale by third parties on their websites” does not show use for the “on-line retail store services”