Now there is an Office Action in the red-hair-and-tinsel trademark application (previous blog article). You can see the TSDR page and the Office Action. The Examining Attorney gives several bases for refusal:
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- Does not function as a service mark
- Non-distinctive trade dress
- Specimen refusal – fails to directly associate mark with services
- Mark on drawing differs from mark on specimen
While certainly a welcome action, one must wonder from “there is also a public policy consideration with allowing an individual to claim ownership of a human’s immutable characteristics” whether the Examining Attorney truly believes that tinsel in one’s hair is an “immutable” characteristic.