The Supreme Court held unanimously that a plaintiff in a trademark infringement case may recover the defendant’s profits under 15 U.S.C. §1117(a) without proving that the infringement was willful.
The Federal Circuit held that color marks on product packaging can be inherently distinctive and thus registrable as trademarks without proof of acquired distinctiveness, clarifying that multicolor product packaging marks are treated differently from product design marks.
The Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering marks that are immoral or scandalous constitutes an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech under the First Amendment.
The Federal Circuit held that a trademark registration creates a presumption of secondary meaning only as of the date of registration — not retroactively — requiring Converse to independently prove its Chuck Taylor trade dress had acquired distinctiveness before each infringer’s first infringing use
The Federal Circuit vacated the TTAB’s decision allowing Coca-Cola to register its ZERO trademarks without a disclaimer, holding the Board applied the wrong genericness standard and failed to properly assess the degree of descriptiveness when evaluating acquired distinctiveness.
The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering ‘disparaging’ trademarks violates the First Amendment — invalidating the PTO’s refusal to register THE SLANTS for an Asian-American band and establishing that trademark registration is a gover
An en banc Federal Circuit held that Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, which bars registration of ‘disparaging’ trademarks, violates the First Amendment — a landmark ruling that the Supreme Court affirmed in Matal v. Tam (2017), eliminating one of trademark law’s longest-standing res
The Supreme Court held that TTAB likelihood-of-confusion decisions on trademark registration can preclude relitigation of the same issue in a federal court infringement suit when the usages adjudicated are materially the same.
The Supreme Court held that competitors may bring Lanham Act false advertising claims challenging product labels even when those labels have been approved or regulated under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The Sixth Circuit held that Static Control Components had standing to sue Lexmark under the Lanham Act for false advertising in the toner cartridge market — a ruling affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2014 under a new zone-of-interests and proximate cause standing framework that displaced the split am
The Second Circuit held that eBay was not liable for contributory trademark infringement arising from third-party sellers listing counterfeit Tiffany jewelry, because eBay’s general knowledge that counterfeit goods were present on its platform — without specific knowledge of particular infring
The Federal Circuit affirmed the TTAB’s refusal to register VEUVE ROYALE for sparkling wine, holding that it was likely to cause confusion with the famous VEUVE CLICQUOT mark under the DuPont factors analysis.
The Supreme Court held that a defendant asserting classic fair use in a trademark case bears no burden to negate likelihood of confusion, and some degree of consumer confusion may coexist with a lawful fair use.
The Federal Circuit reversed the TTAB’s refusal to register BLUE MOON for beer, holding that beer and restaurant services are not presumptively related goods and services, and that the USPTO must point to something more than the mere relatedness of industries to refuse registration under the l
The Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s false designation of origin provision applies to the physical source of goods, not to the communicative content of expressive works — so unaccredited copying of a public domain film does not violate the Act.
The Federal Circuit held that NAFTA’s amendments to the Lanham Act require proof of actual consumer deception before a mark can be refused registration as primarily geographically deceptively misdescriptive, overturning a TTAB refusal of the CALIFORNIA INNOVATIONS mark.
The Supreme Court held that the Federal Trademark Dilution Act requires proof of actual dilution of the famous mark, not merely a likelihood of dilution — a standard Congress later reversed by enacting the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006.
The Supreme Court held that when a product feature was the subject of a utility patent, that prior art disclosure is strong evidence the feature is functional and therefore unprotectable as trade dress under the Lanham Act.
The Federal Circuit vacated a TTAB opposition ruling, holding that the Board improperly analyzed likelihood of confusion by focusing only on the “Packard” component of HEWLETT-PACKARD rather than considering the marks in their entireties, and failed to apply the correct legal test for th
The Federal Circuit held that the TTAB failed to give proper weight to the fame of the FRITO-LAY trademark when finding no likelihood of confusion with the mark FIDO LAY for dog treats, establishing that famous marks deserve full weight in the multi-factor Dupont analysis.