A trademark speaks to your branding. This can be any word, phrase, symbol, etc. that identifies the source of a good or a service in commerce. Let me use McDonald’s® as a good example. The word “McDonald’s” is a trademark. We call this a standard character text trademark and it would be on its own […]
In general, you are free to resell any lawfully purchased item and you are not required to purchase from an authorized source or be otherwise sanctioned by the maker, but doing so ensures the best chances that you are dealing in legitimate product. If the products turn out to be counterfeit you are responsible for […]
Using someone else’s branded product as an ingredient of your own or integrating it in some way will usually not be a problem, at least not under trademark law. But merely taking another’s branded product, removing that branding and replacing it with your own is a form of trademark infringement known as “Reverse Passing Off.” […]
As with so many other aspects of law, the short answer is… wait for it… IT DEPENDS! In general, you are free to use another’s trademark descriptively in text to refer to that mark holder. This is called “nominative fair use” and the classic example is using marks like “Coke” or Pepsi” in a menu […]
As I was driving through my hometown recently I noticed a new pizza place that opened and its name caught my attention: Goodfellas. That’s right, just like the movie. To thicken the plot a bit further, they employed a logo that was actually taken from The Godfather series of movies namely the iconic image of […]
