Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category
« Older Entries |Stanley Cup Playoffs Spark Trademark Activity
Monday, May 30th, 2011
The final round of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs is about to kick off here in Vancouver, with the hometown Canucks facing off for the first time ever in the playoffs against the storied Boston Bruins. Perhaps not surprisingly, local businesses in Vancouver are looking to capitalize on this historic event in different ways.
For example, the Vancouver Province is reporting that the Boston Pizza chain has temporarily (and wisely) rebranded itself as Vancouver Pizza, for the duration of the series.
Earlier in the playoffs, a local automobile dealership that was using the phrase “Go Canucks Go” and the team’s logo on the window of the dealership premises, received a cease and desist letter from the offices of the National Hockey League, demanding that the references to the CANUCKS word mark and logo be removed from their window.
No doubt as the series cranks up, other local businesses will find equally creative ways to get in on the action.
Posted in Branding, Protection & Enforcement | No Comments »
Restaurant Trademarks: Worth their Salt?
Monday, January 24th, 2011
The Globe and Mail is reporting on a dispute that has arisen between Vancouver’s Salt Tasting Room, which opened in 2006, and Toronto’s Salt Wine Bar, which opened in the summer of 2010. The owner of the Vancouver Tasting Room apparently appealed to the Toronto Wine Bar owners to change their name, but without success.
This dispute highlights the need for businesses, restaurant and otherwise, to register their trademarks in Canada and to register them sooner rather than later, since once a registration issues, it grants the registered owner the exclusive right to use that mark or one that is confusingly similar, throughout Canada in association with the claimed goods and services, even if that owner has only used its mark in one city or region of Canada.
In this case, the Vancouver owner waited until May of 2009 to file applications to register its SALT TASTING ROOM and SALT marks, even though it claims in both applications to have used those marks since July of 2006. Because of the timing of the start up of the Toronto restaurant and the current status of those applications, the position of the parties is murkier than it might otherwise be. What further muddies the waters are several prior registrations for marks in Canada that include the word “Salt” that are registered to other entities.
As another recent article notes, the restaurant industry is no stranger to trademark issues, including the lawsuit recently launched by the Wild Wing restaurant chain in Aurora, Ontario against Buffalo Wild Wings, a United States franchise operator that is expanding into Canada.
The fact that the Salt story involves restaurants in Vancouver and Toronto is also of interest, given that we are waiting to hear how the Supreme Court of Canada will rule in Masterpiece Inc. v. Alavida Lifestyles Inc. where one of the issues is the likelihood of confusion between similar marks used in two geographically distinct areas; in that case, in the context of the ability of an earlier user’s ability to block a later user’s application for registration.
Posted in Branding, Case Law, Protection & Enforcement | No Comments »
Survey On Preparation For New gTLDs
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
A survey is now being conducted by World Trademark Review (WTR), seeking input from marketing and trademark professionals as to their views on how industry is preparing for the impact of the new generic top level domains (gTLD) that ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) appears to be pushing forward with. The survey is supported by a number of domain name and brand protection service providers, trademark owner associations and professional marketing associations.
As previously reported on this blog, ICANN proposes to expand beyond the current gTLDs, of which there are 21, including .com, .org and .net. Under the proposed expansion, any company will be permitted to set up its own domain registry under any term – for example .cars, .honda, .mapleleafs, .canucks and pretty much anything else will be possible. This development obviously has huge implications for all brand owners.
WTR’s survey is intended to provide a sense of how well prepared brand owners are for this coming change.
Posted in Branding, Domain Name Disputes, Domain Names, Protection & Enforcement | No Comments »