When the iPad was announced, tablet-PC manufacturer Fujitsu pointed out that they owned the trademark to the name. As a result of undisclosed negotiations, the iPad trademark now belongs to Apple.
BusinessWeek and Reuters report French luxury goods manufacturer LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA has filed a suit alleging that Korean auto company Hyundai infringed on its trademark LV logo in a Superbowl commercial entitled “Luxury”, which was broadcast to 106 million people. LVMH complains that a dark brown basketball with interlocking “L”s and “Z”s along with “O”s and “X”s, which appears in the commercial, is a “colorable imitation” of Louis Vuitton’s Toile Monogram trademark, especially with the light brown-on-dark brown colour scheme.
The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, alleges that “Hyundai’s conduct is likely to both dilute the distinctiveness and tarnish the reputation of the LVM marks” and Hyundai intended “to benefit commercially from the fame and renown of the LVM Marks by creating a false association between Louis Vuitton and its automobiles.” LVMH seeks triple damages, punitive damages, a halt to the alleged infringement, and other remedies.
The basketball in question can be seen at 0:03-0:05 of the commercial, which may be found here.
The cheer of this year’s Superbowl champions, the New Orleans Saints, is a phrase that has been chanted for some years – “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?”
It is only now the NFL has attempted to assert rights to the phrase through the Florida Department of State. It has issued cease-and-desist orders against New Orleans vendors who sell Saints memorabilia featuring the wording.
The NFL says the shirts infringe on a legal trademark it owns. Separately, two brothers and longtime Saints fans claim they own the phrase, which was around before the team’s inception in 1966.
Fans and merchants are outraged, the NFL’s timing coincides with the Saints first outstanding season in years.
Apple’s recently announced tablet device, as rumors earlier had it, is a multi-touch device poised to challenge digital e-book readers and supposedly fill a niche between handheld cellphone/mp3 devices and netbooks. Apple has unveiled the device as the Apple iPad.
Although it appears that Apple has filed trademark applications in various countries where it is likely to not face any problems, Canada included, that it may face a dispute in the US. The Japanese electronics manufacturer, Fujitsu, says it has been manufacturing and selling a device called iPad since 2002, and that an outstanding trademark application has existed since 2003.
Fujitsu stopped responding to requests by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, who declared the name “abandoned,” in April 2009. Fujitsu did, however, begin pursuing the iPad trademark again in June last year. Apple has filed three petitions in hopes of taking the iPad name away from Fujitsu.
[Professor Katz's new paper is freely available on SSRN.]
Modern trademark scholarship and jurisprudence view trademark law as an institution aimed at improving the amount and quality of information available in the marketplace. Under this paradigm—known as the search-costs theory of trademarks—trademarks are socially beneficial because they reduce consumer search costs, and as a consequence provide producers with an incentive to maintain their goods and services at defined and persistent qualities.
Working within this paradigm, my recent paper refines the search-cost theory of trademarks. It highlights an important point whose significance hitherto has largely escaped notice, namely that reducing search costs and providing incentives to maintain quality are distinct functions, although they are related. Read the rest of this entry »
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