Booking.COM Entitled to Registration

by | Jul 3, 2020 | Case law, Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property, Trademarks

On June 30, 2020, the United States Supreme Court rendered its opinion in the landmark trademark case United States Patent and Trademark Office, et al. v. Booking .com.591 U.S. (2020).  This decision may be helpful for those who wish to seek a federal trademark registration where the primary mark includes a top level domain (TLD) identifier, such as “.com” and where the domain name itself may be generic or highly descriptive of the service offered at that domain. Prior to this decision the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) had taken the position that such marks would not be eligible for registration because of the generic nature of the term(s) preceding the TLD portion of the domain (the portion preceding .com).  However, certain issues, such as the issue of “consumer perception,” as discussed below, will most certainly be the subject of debate and dispute between these trademark applicants and the PTO.

In this case the online travel agency Booking.com sought to register the trademark BOOKING.COM related to its website for lodging reservations and related services and was denied registration by the PTO.  The PTO determined that BOOKING.COM was a generic term not entitled to federal trademark registration.  Generic terms can never be registered because they merely identify the class of service or product being offered and not the source of that product or service.   Accordingly, it was the PTO’s position that BOOKING merely identified the class of service of making or “booking” a lodging reservation and .COM referred to a website.

Booking.com appealed the PTO’s decision to the District Court which ruled in Booking.com’s favor.  The PTO then appealed this decision to the Court of Appeals which also ruled in Booking.com’s favor.  The PTO made its final appeal to the Supreme Court which agreed to hear the case. 

Affirming both the District Court and Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, held that “[a] term styled “generic.com” is a generic name for a class of goods or services only if [emphasis added] the term has that meaning to consumers.” Thus, if it is determined that consumers do not find “generic.com” to be generic to a class of goods or services, but rather unique to goods or services of the entity seeking the trademark, the mark is eligible for registration.  In this case, it was determined by the lower courts and uncontested by the PTO before the Supreme Court that consumers did not think BOOKING.COM referred to online hotel-registrations as a class, but rather specifically to the online travel agency Booking.com.   Thus, BOOKING.COM, for online lodging registration services, is entitled to federal trademark protection on the principal trademark registry.

 As a result of this Supreme Court decision, consumer perception will determine whether a “generic.com” mark can be a registered trademark.  The question that will be asked with every such trademark application is “what do consumers think ‘generic.com’ means?”   This begs the question, “how do we determine what consumers think something means?”  The Supreme Court gives us some insight into this issue by stating that “[e]vidence…can include not only consumer surveys, but also dictionaries, usage by consumers and competitors, and any other source of evidence bearing on how consumers perceive a term’s meaning.”  The Supreme Court does offer a word of caution with regard to surveys.  “Surveys can be helpful evidence of consumer perception but require care in their design and interpretation.”


There will now likely be a flurry of trademark applications for “generic.com” marks in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.  While the ruling is certainly favorable to trademark applicants, consumer perception and the method(s) used to try and determine what consumers think something means should be carefully considered beforehand. 

Congratulations to Our Client: “Mario Armstrong’s Never Settle Show” Wins Emmy Award

by | May 8, 2018 | Client Spotlight, Copyrights, Intellectual Property

Hard Work and Hustle Pay Off:  Congratulations to our client, Mario Armstrong’s Never Settle Show for taking home an Emmy Award for “Interactivity” at New York’s 61st Annual Emmy Awards on April 14, 2018. The Emmy Awards Show celebrates talented television creators and media professionals in the industry. See Mario’s Emmy Award acceptance speech on behalf of the Show here.  In addition to the Show’s award win, Mario Armstrong was also nominated for an Emmy Award for his role as Program Host.

Recently celebrating its one-year anniversary, the Never Settle Show has been an industry game-changer in television broadcasting. By blending traditional TV production and innovative technology, the Show engages with a real-time audience from all over the world for participation in the Show by live video streaming and connecting with social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Periscope, Instagram, and YouTube Live.  The real-time audience communicates and interacts with guests through the Show’s social media.

In 2010, Mario Armstrong won an Emmy Award for Best TV Show Host and he was honored with another nomination in 2015 and again in 2018.  The Show recently finished its second season and is looking forward to announcing its third season.

Produced by Al Roker Entertainment and Never Settle Productions, the Never Settle Show airs each Wednesday at 7 P.M. ET/4 P.M. PT in New York City in front of a live studio audience. Viewers can watch and interact with the show through Entrepreneur Media’s Facebook page on: https://www.facebook.com/EntMagazine and The Never Settle Show, https://www.facebook.com/NeverSettleShow/.

The entire team at Oliver & Grimsley, LLC wishes Mario and the Never Settle team continued success – Congrats on all your hard work!  You did it!

 

 

Pharrell and Robin Thicke have “Got to Give it Up” to Marvin Gaye’s Family for Infringement due to “Blurred Lines” Song

by | Mar 27, 2018 | Case law, Copyrights, Entertainment law, In the News, Intellectual Property, Licensing, Litigation, Media law

Last week, the Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court ruling that the artists of the 2013 “Blurred Lines” best-selling single infringed the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got To Give It Up”.

In 2013, the family of the late Marvin Gaye sued musicians Pharrell Williams, Robin Thicke, and T.I.  (Clifford Harris, Jr.), and related recording companies, for copyright infringement. “Blurred Lines” was the best-selling single in the world that year and the Gaye family believed it to be similar in composition to Marvin Gaye’s 1977 song “Got To Give It Up”. In 2015, the trial jury agreed.  After three years of an appeal process brought by the musician defendants, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the infringement ruling (Williams, et al. v. Gaye, et al. Case No. 15-56880)(March 21, 2018).

The decision was not unanimous. Judge Nguyen wrote a dissenting opinion stating that the songs “differ in melody, harmony, and rhythm.”  She also noted that it can be “challenging for judges untrained in music to parse two pieces of sheet music for extrinsic similarity. But however difficult this exercise, we cannot simply defer to the conclusions of experts about the ultimate finding of substantial similarity. […] Judges must still decide whether, as a matter of law, these elements collectively support a finding of substantial similarity.”  This ruling ultimately changes the music industry landscape moving forward, as it is arguable that the decision improperly protects an artist’s form of musical style. The majority opinion written by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., however, focused mostly on the technicalities of the case and the grounds for appeal, determining that the trial court erred only in finding Interscope Records and T.I. liable.

The Gaye family is entitled to approximately a $5.3 million-dollar judgement and running royalties of 50% on future songwriter and publishing revenues.  The damages breakdown consisted of: $3,188,528 in actual damages, plus profits of $1,768,192 against Thicke and $357,631 against Williams (and companies collecting royalties on William’s behalf). TI and his associated recording company were cleared of any infringement.

***To investigate or consider copyright protection for music, lyrics, or other works of art, or for more information, please contact Pamela K. Riewerts, Esq., partner at Oliver & Grimsley, LLC.  Pamela may be reached via email at: pamela@olivergrimsley.com

Coca-Cola discovers small design changes can mean lack of protection of product designs: protecting product shapes and appearances

by | Apr 13, 2017 | Business Law, Design patent, Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property, Patents, Trademarks

How Famous is the Coca-Cola bottle design?  Not quite enough to protect small differences 

Design patents are an increasingly useful tool in product configuration protection, but as Coca-Cola recently learned, even a famous product design has its limits.  As surely everyone knows, Coca-Cola owns a protected famous trademark for it’s original hour-glass bottle shape featuring fluted ridged lines.  Earlier this year, however, the European Union (“EU”) Court denied trademark protection to Coca-Cola for a newly evolved, smooth shaped bottle. The Coca-Cola Company v. Office from Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trademarks and Designs)(OHIM) 2016. 

Under EU law, a trademark may consist of “the shape of goods”, as long as the shape is distinguishable from other third-party products. Coca-Cola’s original hour-glass bottle featuring ripple contours is “one of the most famous shapes in the world… is so distinctive it could be recognized in the dark” Coca-Cola stated. However, the EU court found that Coca-Cola failed to establish that the new smooth bottle design had acquired distinctive familiar connection and character through use.

Coca-Cola originally developed the fluted contoured bottle in the U.S. in 1915 to distinguish its bottle from competitors making similar bottles. Cola-Cola developed a glass “bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.”  After several years of continuous use the unique distinction and recognition lead to trademark protection.

The new smooth bottle shape maintains the hour-glass bulge in the center of the bottle consistent with the original bottle shape, but does not feature the rippled contours that brought the original bottle its worldwide recognition. Although Coca-Cola argued that the smooth bottle is “a natural evolution” of the traditional bottle, both the EU Trademark Office in 2014 and the EU court in 2016, denied the request for trademark protection.

Strategies to Secure Initial Product Appearance and Shape Protection via Design Patents

Similar to the EU, U.S law also allows for trademark protection of product configuration and packaging that acquire distinctiveness  over time.  See Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, Section 15 U.S. Code 1051.  However, the design must gain “secondary meaning” as the Supreme Court has ruled that “a product’s design is distinctive, and therefore protectible, only upon a showing of secondary meaning”. See Walmart v. Samara.

Design patents can fill this “use” gap – as they also have the ability to protect unique product appearance and packaging at initial launch of products. This form of protection can serve as the first line of protection to claim ownership of distinctive shapes before the established passage of time that later may provide a basis for prolonged customer recognition which eventually may be used to establish trademark protection for the source of origin of the product.  While design patent protection has a definitive term of protection– 15 years (See Manual of Patent Examining Procedures (MPEP) 1501), trademark protection, once established, may continue perpetually so long as the trademark is in use.

Coca-Cola first obtained U.S. design patents on its ornamental bottle shape in 1916, and again on it’s redesigned contoured bottle in 1923 and 1937.  Design patent protection at that time lasted 14 years (currently 15 years). Years later in April 1960, after the product gained established customer recognition over time, Coca-Cola obtained federal trademark registration for its fluted contour bottle shape, thereby enabling the company to protect its fluted bottle design indefinitely with continuous use and protecting the iconic bottle that it is today.

If Coca-Cola is seeking to protect its new bottle shape in the U.S., one avenue may be to investigate the availability of design patent protection for the initial protection of the new bottle shape, and then look to secure trademark protection after prolonged continued use of the product.  This strategy faired well for Coca-Cola in obtaining initial design patent protection and then continued trademark protection of its original rippled bottle shape.

Discussing these concepts in the current age – the design elements of product are becoming very important.  For example, Apple protected its iPhone design and recovered significant damages against Samsung for infringement.  Car manufacturers have recently filed claims against game manufacturers for digitizing their car shapes into a game.  See as an example BMW v Turbosquid.

Should you seek Design Patent Protection for the Appearances and Shapes on Products or Packaging?

A protectable design must be manifested in the appearance of the product and consist of “visual ornamental characteristics embodied in, or applied to, an article of manufacture. The subject matter of a design patent application may relate to the configuration or shape of an article, to the surface ornamentation applied to an article, or to the combination of configuration and surface ornamentation.”  MPEP 1500 et seq.; 35 USC 171 et seq.  Design protection is based on specifically drawn product figures made in accordance with the U.S. Patent Office Rules, and submitted to the U.S. Patent Office with a patent application in order to identify the legal metes and bounds of the protected design. If you are interested in preventing others from making, using, selling or importing the same or similar product shape or appearance, you may want to engage a patent attorney to investigate whether design patent protection may be available for your product or packaging.  An investigation generally consists of a preliminary search and initial evaluation of your product shape or appearance as being new, novel and non-obvious in order to meet the requirements of the U.S. Patent Office.

Should you Trademark the Appearance and Shape of Products or Packaging?

You do not need to register a trademark with the U.S. Trademark Office to establish trademark rights.  Protection is established through use of the trademark.  However, without federal registration, the trademark is only enforceable in the geographic area where the product is sold.  A federal registration on the principal register, however, provides additional advantages and is likely beneficial in most cases primarily because a federally registered trademark on the principal register establishes nationwide priority throughout the entire U.S.  Therefore, registration ultimately gives you the right to prevent others from using or registering your trademark nationwide and provides notice to third-parties of your registration.  It should be noted that even with principal register trademark protection you cannot prevent someone in a remote location where you do not actually market or sell your product from using a trademark or product design that is confusingly similar until you actually enter that market.  A registered trademark is also presumed valid and may eliminate certain invalidity arguments after 5 years of continuous use (incontestability).

How to Register Appearances and Shapes on Products or Packaging:

In order to register your product shape or packaging in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as a trademark your packaging or product design must have acquired secondary meaning – that is, unique, original, and recognizable by consumers as the source of origin.  Can the public identify your company as the source of origin of the product or the packaging by its distinctive features?

In addition, the trade dress must not be functional.   See generally, Manual of Trademark Examining Procedures (TMEP) Section 1202.02  The original Coca-Cola bottle design met all of these requirements (i.e. the fluted ridges did not serve a significant function in the product, but rather were merely ornamental).

If a product design or packaging is not inherently distinctive it can still be registered after it acquires distinctiveness through long use, known as secondary meaning.

There are three ways that a mark itself may be inherently distinctive—if its intrinsic nature serves to identify a particular source.

1) Fanciful trademarks, such as a made-up word (Xerox- a created name with no other meaning than acting as a trademark);

2) Arbitrary trademarks, having no relation to the product other than as a means of identifying the company that produces it (Apple computers- a word in the English language not related to the product);

3) Suggestive trademarks, providing a link between the characteristics of a particular product and its producer (Microsoft- suggestive of software for microcomputers).

Generally, any mark that meets one of these criteria qualifies for trademark protection without any specific proof that consumers associate the mark with the specific source of the product.

To prove that the trademark product or packaging has acquired distinctiveness through secondary meaning, a mark must be shown to be distinct in the minds of the consumer and with a recognizable source of origin.  Proving distinctive secondary meaning, however, is often expensive and legally challenging and often involves consumer surveys for recognition.

If you are interested in filing a design patent and/or registering your product configuration or packaging with the USPTO, you should contact an attorney to investigate, advise, and file an application for your product or packaging for registration.

Should you need assistance with design patents or trademark protection, please contact Pamela K. Riewerts, Esq., partner at Oliver & Grimsley, LLC at: Pamela@olivergrimsley.com

More information may be found on the following websites:

http://www.uspto.gov/patent

http://www.uspto.gov/trademark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress

http://heritage.coca-cola.com/

http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2016/02/24/without-the-ripples-coca-cola-bottles-arent-the-real-thing-says-eu-court/

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=174563&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=640112

Patenting Software Technology in the current patent environment

by | May 26, 2016 | Intellectual Property, Patents, Software, Uncategorized

newspaperA brief recent history of patenting software in the United States goes something like this:  before 1998 it was possible, but the internet was just coming to its own so there were not many software patents; then in 1998 the State Street decision was handed down.  The State Street decision essentially said that patents that claimed inventions for methods and processes traditionally accomplished using manual techniques but now accomplished using a computer process or method such as spreadsheets, financial calculations etc could be valid – that is, they were at least within patent subject matter and not merely laws of nature. In the ensuing years before the run up to the turn of the century “everything under the sun” in software and internet technology was sought to be patented, and hundreds of thousands of “software” patents were issued.  The crash of 2000 wiped out a lot of marginal internet businesses, however software patenting continued in earnest under State Street.   Thanks in part to the combination of the huge number of software patents issued and the bankruptcy of a lot of companies after the financial crashes of 2000 and 2007, a new industry was born – the so called “patent troll” or in our parlance, non practicing entity (NPE) or patent assertion entity (PAE).  Whatever you call it, the business model is to sue companies that use what most of us consider to be “basic building blocks” technology in those patents.  Economically patent suits are staggeringly expensive so many companies, including many of our clients, opted to pay -or colloquially – feed the troll – it just made more economic sense.  However, slowly bigger companies started fighting back. What was born from that unholy (or holy, depending on your view) war was  a series of Supreme Court cases, starting with In Re Bilski, and finishing on the Alice Corp decision.

Alice Corp literally laid waste to nearly every software/internet patent in its path.  Alice Corp’s impact can be seen in the somewhat dramatic reduction of patent filings since it issued (see 2015 Patent Litigation Study) – some people have just given up trying…  Recently, however, a Federal Circuit decision has given some hope in overcoming Alice Corp.

In Enfish v Microsoft the Federal Circuit found that certain database technology process described in the patent was not abstract – that is, that the invention overcame the first prong of the 2 part Alice Corp test.  Under Alice Corp and the previous decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. “First, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts. [] If so, we then ask, “[w]hat else is there in the claims before us?” [] To answer that question, we consider the elements of each claim both individually and “as an ordered combination” to determine whether the additional elements “transform the nature of the claim” into a patent-eligible application.” The first prong of the test is known as the “abstract idea” prong, meant to embody “the longstanding rule that ‘[a]n idea of itself is not patentable.”  So, for example “an algorithm for converting binary-coded decimal numerals into pure binary form” was merely abstract because it sought to “in practical effect . . . [] patent [] the algorithm itself.” Likewise, “a method for hedging against the financial risk of price fluctuations” was unpatentable because “”the basic concept of hedging, or protecting against risk. [is] a fundamental economic practice long prevalent in our system of commerce and taught in any introductory finance class.'”  The addition of the computer did not transform the idea of hedging into anything inventive.  Most cases that find prong 1 of the test go on to find that whatever the system or process that is claimed in the patent is, it is not sufficiently transformative to overcome the 2nd prong.   

In Enfish, the Federal Circuit held that the database technology described in the claim was not abstract.  The specific technology deals with a better method of handling related database data.  In a traditional relational database, an information source is stored in one table, another information source is stored in another table, and the relationship between those tables is either defined in columns on each table, or held in a third “pivot” table that defines the foreign table keys that link the tables together.  The invention in Enfish involved placing all of the related data in ONE table, and defining the relationships in table columns in that same table.  The effect of doing that was to make the process of retrieving related data faster and more efficient, among other benefits.  This invention thus directly impacted computer process efficiency – in this case, database efficiency.  The Federal Circuit held that “the first step in the Alice inquiry in this case asks whether the focus of the claims is on the specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities (i.e., the self-referential table for a computer database) or, instead, on a process that qualifies as an “abstract idea” for which computers are invoked merely as a tool. . . [a]ccordingly, we find that the claims at issue in this appeal are not directed to an abstract idea within the meaning of Alice. Rather, they are directed to a specific improvement to the way computers operate, embodied in the self-referential table.”

The patent lawyers at Oliver & Grimsley have overcome Alice Corp rejections in several instances, and have learned to navigate the intricacies of obtaining patent protection over computer based technology.  In a series of future articles we will go over some of the issued patents we have been counsel on and some of the issues that come up during prosecution of software and computer based patents.

For further information, feel free to contact Mike Oliver, Larry Guffey or Pamela Riewerts.   You can view many of our prosecuted patents here.

Oliver & Grimsley, LLC Secures Patents in USPTO

by | May 19, 2016 | Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property, Patents, Uncategorized

Hancock U.S. Patent No. 9304496 Pamela Riewerts Larry Guffey Oliver Grimsley Patent Attorney Lawyer BaltimoreMulti-Purpose Wrist Worn Tool Watch: O&G Timely Moves Through USPTO to Obtain Patent

We are pleased to announce that Oliver & Grimsley, LLC successfully secured U.S. Patent No. 9,304,496, entitled: “Multi-Purpose Tool Watch Housing Multiple Tool Members to be moved from a Stored Position and Extended Position for Use”.  This application proceeded through the patent office in less than one year as a prioritized application.

The invention is an integrated combination of a wristwatch with multi-purpose tool members that may be stored and extended from a wristband housing. Use of the tool watch is particularly suited for an individual to carry a tool set in a convenient form on the user’s wrist and to be able to access tools during daily or outdoor activities.

Congratulations to Patrick Hancock on his recently issued patent!