Mancinelli & Associates Intellectual Property Law
“Where the offense is, let the great axe fall.” — Claudius in Hamlet.
Here’s a recent situation where a family-owned business failed to do some due diligence, chose to adopt their family name as their brand name and trademark, and in the end created an offense that brought down the axe — a story of two wineries in “The Blair Family vs. The Blair Family.”
Continue reading “Family Names & Trademarks — Family-Owned Winery Loses Its Brand and Name”
Here’s another one to file under the maxim “use it or lose it,” from a recent decision in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) that is also an example of how people with inflated importance often fail to pay attention to the finer details, to their detriment.
Surfing is a competitive sport and that spirit of rivalry extends to businesses teaching the sport of surfing. In this instance, a late comer to the surfing school business in Santa Cruz, California, decided to threaten an established competitor with trademark infringement.
Continue reading “Surf’s Up! — Surf School Trademark War Ends Badly For The Bully”
The subject of this article could be filed in the category of “dumb criminals.” And here’s why.
In 2015, David Ryan Buchard of Merced, California, was already under investigation by the US Postal Inspector and a special agent for Homeland 
Security Investigation (“HSI”) for suspicion of drug dealing. They believed that Buchard was doing his transactions on a dark web drug marketplace known as The Silk Road. They were trying to track Buchard’s Bitcoin transactions on The Silk Road. Bitcoin is a form of digital money technically known as “crypto-currency,” as opposed to “fiat-currency” (i.e., money created and regulated by governments). Crypto-currencies, including Bitcoin, are legal for private transactions, but are very often used by drug traffickers because the users’ real identities are cloaked by pseudonyms.
Continue reading “Dark Web Drug Dealer’s Trademark Application Gets Him Nailed”
Too often businesses, in conceiving their brand names and the marks/logos that represent their brands, adopt really weak marks that can have disastrous consequences. In the case at hand, a restaurant chain adopted as its service mark a Spanish/Portuguese word that literally means “grilled meat” in English. As it turned out, it seems that “grilled meat” means nothing more than “grilled meat” rather than a brand name for the restaurant’s services.
Continue reading “Is Your Brand Generic? — When Grilled Meat Means Just Grilled Meat”
At least once a month, clients send me urgent messages that they received notices that appear to be official government correspondence about their trademark applications or trademark registrations. Typically, these notices (sometimes even in the form of an invoice) demand the payment of various fees to insure their trademarks are in compliance. However, on a quick review of these notices, it becomes immediately apparent they are all bogus. In the last several years there has been a growing cottage industry of private companies trolling for customers by using misleading trademark “notices.” They often charge fees for services that are not necessary or are often inflated from the official government fees. The problem has become so pervasive that the actual U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) held a public seminar last month on the matter and devotes a page to it on the actual, official USPTO website to educate the public.
Continue reading “The Era of Fake — Solicitations from Fake “Official” Trademark Offices”