Category: Trademarks

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I wonder if LeBron James really has an “intent to use”?

On August 15, 2019, LeBron James (through his company LBJ Trademarks, LLC) filed US trademark application number 88579771 (TSDR).  The application is an ITU application, meaning that the applicant has professed, under penalty of perjury, to have a good-faith intention to use the mark “Taco Tuesday” for goods and services in four classes.

Until today, apparently, when James’s spokesperson said this in a New York Times article:

“The filing was to protect the company from potential lawsuits should we decide to pursue any ideas, nothing of which is in development,” a spokesman for Mr. James said this week on (taco) Tuesday. “It has nothing to do with stopping others from using the term.”

I wonder if anyone will file a protest at the USPTO, citing the New York Times article as evidence of the applicant’s apparent repudiation of any intention to use the mark as a trademark.

Mr. James’s trademark law firm’s offices are in the New York Times building.  Go figure.

Oh and would you look at that?  Normally it takes three months for a newly filed US trademark application to reach the desk of an Examining Attorney.  But oddly, more than two months early compared with the usual workflow, this case has already gotten assigned to an Examining Attorney.  And on the exact same day as this article in the New York Times!  Coincidence I’m sure.

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Who doesn’t know the difference between a copyright and a trademark? The New York Times

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Who doesn’t know the difference between a copyright and a trademark?

The New York Times.  In an article dated September 4, 2019, entitled LeBron James, a Fan of Tacos, Seeks to Trademark “Taco Tuesday”, the newspaper says:

On August 15, a company called LBJ Trademarks LLC filed a request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on behalf of Mr. James to copyright “Taco Tuesday.” 

The reporter’s sloppiness can be seen in the jump from “trademark” in the headline to “copyright” in the quoted sentence.  But even with just a mouse click or two, the reporter could have fact-checked that if someone seeks to “copyright” something, the application does not get filed at the USPTO at all but instead gets filed at the Copyright Office.

This follows in the footsteps of newspapers that did not know the difference between a patent and a trademark, namely USA Today and The National Review.  

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Yet another reason that that trademark application will get refused

(Update:  Just as predicted, the Examining Attorney has refused registration in view of this earlier trademark application.  You can see the update here.)

Earlier today I wrote a blog article about a trademark application that had been filed by Ohio State University for the word “the”.  I predicted that it would get refused as “merely ornamental”.  But alert reader Edward Weller drew my attention to an earlier trademark application in which someone else also seeks trademark protection for the word “the”.  You can see the TSDR record here. Continue reading “Yet another reason that that trademark application will get refused”

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A trademark application that will get refused

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(Update:  Yes, as I predicted the Examining Attorney has refused registration because the “the” is “merely ornamental”.  You can see this blog article with an update.)

It is all over the news that Ohio State University has filed a trademark application for the word “the”.  I predict that the USPTO will mail an Office Action refusing registration in this trademark application.  Here’s why. Continue reading “A trademark application that will get refused”

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USPTO will be closed July 4

Thursday, July 4, 2019 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia.  For this reason, the USPTO will be closed on that day.  This means that any action or response that would normally be due on July 4, 2019 will be timely if it is done by Friday, July 5, 2019.

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How long it takes USPTO to declare a trademark application abandoned?

Sometimes a trademark practitioner will have a pending US trademark application (“the Junior Application”) that has been suspended pending the disposition of an earlier application (“the Senior Application”). And sometimes the Senior Application will “have one foot in the grave” in the sense that it has received a Notice of Allowance and has not, apparently, timely filed a Statement of Use. In such a case, the natural question is, how long does it take the USPTO to get around to formally declaring the Senior Application abandoned? I looked at a couple of recent cases to see. Continue reading “How long it takes USPTO to declare a trademark application abandoned?”