In September, pop star Justin Bieber and model Hailey Baldwin tied the knot. Now, Hailey Bieber is taking serious steps to preserve rights to use her new name for business purposes. TMZ reported that she has filed a trademark application to register "Bieber Beauty"...
Trademark Law
Counterfeiting: Trademark infringement on steroids
We often talk in this space about trademark infringement. Trademarks are protected indicators of branding that identify the sources of affiliated products.Perhaps the most extreme kind of trademark infringement is counterfeiting. On March 19, the U.S. District Court...
NCAA has multiple trademarks associated with Final Four tourney
Trademarks are not just important for commercial success. It is also vital for some nonprofit organizations to protect their branding in furtherance of their charitable missions.It may surprise some readers to learn that the National Collegiate Athletic Association,...
Can’t trademark your slogan? That’s a pile of covfefe!
When you read this title, with whom or what did you associate "covfefe"? Of course, this is the nonsensical word President Trump used in a tweet, possibly when he was tired and in loose control of his typing fingers. Now people associate it with his persona and...
Court lays out building blocks of trademark law
In October 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit released an opinion in a trademark dispute between Converse and certain shoe competitors over Converse's Chuck Taylor All Star sneaker, sold since 1932 and registered as a design trademark in 2013. The...
Mold-A-Rama trademark owner files infringement suit
Many Americans have a distant childhood memory of the magical machines found at zoos, museums and amusement parks that created on the spot slightly-still-warm plastic souvenir animals and other figurines with seams down the backs where the two sides melded...
Trademarks need inherent distinctiveness or secondary meaning
At our law firm, we represent people in a wide variety of legal matters related to the protection of branding through trademarks and service marks. A trademark is a distinctive word, name, phrase, logo, symbol or even a "device" like a sound, scent, motion or color...
Presidential tweet criticized for … trademark misuse?
Some are still having a hard time accepting President Trump's use of Twitter to announce government policy or to express his personal or political opinions. One of his recent tweets, however, raised trademark issues when he modified the line "Winter is Coming" from...
When is a moving logo or image protectable as a trademark?
At our Northern California law firm, we represent people and businesses seeking trademark protections for their unique branding strategies, including words, phrases and logos used to identify their goods or services. While usually this brings to mind product names or...
Little Tree car freshener trademark owner goes out on a limb
Virtually everyone who grew up in the U.S. and is alive today knows what a Little Tree car freshener is. An image of the successful product dangling from a car mirror immediately comes to mind at mere mention of the tree-shaped air freshener made to improve indoor air...