Occupy Trademark

The Occupy Wall Street movement has moved into the trademark arena with a number of new trademark application filings.

There are currently two filings for Occupy Wall Street both of which were filed on the same day:

* Occupy Wall Street, which appears to be owned by those directly involved with the movement.
* Occupy Wall Street, which is owned by Fer-Eng Investments, LLC. "Fer-Eng Investments appears to be a shell corporation with the only officer named as “The Ferraro-Eng Family Trust.” The names provided on the address refer to Vincent Ferraro and Wee Nah Eng. Interestingly enough, Ferraro, a Stanford Business School grad, is the former Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing for Hewlett-Packard"

Now, those affiliated with the movement filed as in-use so Fer-Eng's intent-to-use filing will likely not end well.

The two latest to jump into the trademark pool are:

OCCUPY Las Vegas
Occupy Los Angeles

The LA mark filed for "political action committee services, namely, promoting the interests of Occupy Los Angeles in the field of politics" whereas the Las Vegas mark filed for clothing.

In a Las Vegas Review Journal interview, Mary Underwood (the protester who filed the application) stated ""This way we can make the argument that they are harming our brand...This is just a bulwark against people using the term in sketchy ways."

Underwood said she doesn't intend to restrict use of the term by people from the Occupy Las Vegas site and has plans to turn over the trademark to whatever entity develops to represent Occupy LV."

I'm sure this won't be the last of the Occupy trademarks. My bet is on parody marks next.

What do you think of these filings? Is it hypocrisy, as some have opined? Or is the movement coalescing in order to protect their voice?

What a Tweeting Mess!

Back in August, I posted about Twitter filing for the mark Retweet. The USPTO has since sent Twitter's legal counsel an Office Action suspending Retweet's application based on prior filings. However, let's take a closer look at these filings & perhaps we can figure out where Retweet is going to end up - abandoned or a real, live Federal trademark.

Here's what the USPTO is telling Twitter:

"Although the examining attorney has searched the Office records and has found no similar registered marks which would bar registration under Trademark Act Section 2(d), 15 U.S.C. Section 1052(d), the examining attorney encloses information regarding pending Application Serial Nos. 77724346, 77802071, 77797006, 77697186, 77749897, 77746004, 77725866, 77701645, 77695071...

Action on this application will be suspended pending the disposition of these application upon the applicant’s response to the office action."

Wooo, that's a whole lot of sevens! Okay, let's look at each one, in order...

TweetLaw is currently suspended pending the outcome of Tweet, which is owned by Twitter.

tweetdealz is currently suspended pending the outcome of a whole lot of filings, which includes Tweet.

TweetTV is currently suspended pending the outcome of quite a few filings. And yup, Tweet is one of them.

Cotweet is being published for opposition. This filing went to publication on the 3rd of this month. So far, no oppositions have been filed. If no oppositions are filed, this filing will move to registration.

TweetNetworking is currently suspended pending the outcome of 7 filings, which include Tweet.

tweetworking is also suspended because of other filings. And guess what? Tweet is in the mix.

TweetDeck is suspended because of Tweet.

tweetPhoto has filed using Twitter's pretty distinctive looking bubbly blue font but their refusal has to do with descriptiveness: "The relevant definition of ‘tweet’ is “[a]n entry posted on the microblogging service Twitter.” See attached. The relevant definition of ‘photo’ is “photograph.” See attached. Thus, the term ‘tweetphoto’ means an entry posted on Twitter to which a photograph is attached."

TweetMarks looks pretty to good to go except the USPTO is waiting for clarification on a specimen from them. They have until December 9th of this year to respond or the mark becomes abandoned.

Wowza. Okay, let's take a step back & look at these filings. A good chunk of them are suspended based on Twitter's filing for Tweet so let's look at that filing:

"Action on this application will be suspended pending the disposition of Application Serial Nos. 77695071, 77697186, and 77701645 upon receipt of the applicant’s response resolving the following."

TweetMarks, CoTweet, and tweetPhoto are the marks mentioned. Look familiar?

So what do you think the outcome of Retweet or Tweet will be?

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It's Graph Time Again!

As promised in this post, I'm revisiting the USPTO's Performance & Accountability Report.

I decided to take a look at the highest number of applications filed based on state residency. Here are the top 6 out of the 310,296 applications filed by residents of the US:

Now let's take a look at these same states to see how many made it to registration. This represents a portion of the 122,266 applications registered to residents of the US. Of course, there's going to be some rollover from those filed in 2006/registered in 2007 and those filed in 2007/registered in 2008 but this gives a pretty fair snapshot:

It still boggles my mind that such a large number of trademark applications are filed that NEVER make it to registration. This is why we always stress to our clients to stay on top of their trademark filings. The USPTO will not keep watch of your trademark; that's your responsibility. Also ensuring that the name is available in the first place will get you past the dreaded refusal Office Action.

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What Happened at the USPTO on...

Christmas?


58 new filings on Xmas

New Year's Eve?


562 -- seems folks were staying in

and on New Year's Day?


55 -- and were taking it easy

These 3 snapshots make a great point: trademarks don't take a day off. Even on holidays, folks out there are filing for trademarks.

Now, let's take a look at any old average day at the USPTO. Last Wednesday, the 16th:


1100! That's quite the jump.

Hundreds even thousands of marks are being filed every day and I hate to speculate but I'm almost positive that most of those marks that are owned by smaller businesses or by individuals are not doing their due diligence in researching their marks or having the application completed properly. I'll devote a couple of more posts elaborating on these points.

Side note: The most interesting sounding mark out of the bunch, in my little opinion, is Serial Number 77-359209 for the Unsinkable Betsy Ross.

Any Sims ® Fans Out There?

Looks like we'll have yet another expansion pack to look forward to - The Sims Carnival.

Electronic Arts ® has filed a Federal trademark application with the USPTO for what looks to be the seventh expansion pack in the popular series. The application was filed on September 14th, 10 days after the release of the latest expansion pack Bon Voyage.

One More Democratic Candidate Trademark Filing

Picking up where we left off from , let's take a look at trademark filings that are using the names of the other Democratic candidates.

One problem...

The only other one I could find is for John Edwards & this mark IS connected with Senator Edwards:

John Edwards President, Serial Number 78291084.

On February 8th of this year, the USPTO sent an Office Action to the Attorney of Record. And, I've got to say, this is the first time I've ever seen something like this:

"The application had been misplaced; on behalf of the Office, the examining attorney apologizes for any inconvenience this delay may have caused."

On September 17th, CNN & YouTube will be hosting the Republican debates. I'll visit this topic again for those folks.

Read more about the trademark application process here.

Looking at the Democratic Candidates Through a Trademark Lens

I, like many others, watched The CNN YouTube Debates last night & I thought it'd be interesting to see what kind of registered/pending trademarks are out there using the names of the Democratic candidates.

Let's start with the two candidates that we seem to hear about the most.

Barack Obama:

These are, from what I can tell, NOT affiliated with Obama or his campaign.

I Back Barack, Serial Number 77035991 & applied for by James R McDonald.

Mr McDonald was sent a refusal citing "Registration is refused because the proposed mark consists of or comprises matter which may falsely suggest a connection with U.S. Senator Barack Obama. Although not connected with the services applicant intends to provide under the proposed mark, the name BARACK is so famous that consumers would presume a connection with Senator Obama."

No Drama with Obama, Serial Number 77153329 & applied for by Sylvia Quarles

On May 10th of this year, Quarles received "The examining attorney refuses registration because the mark consists of or comprises matter which may falsely suggest a connection with the individual Barack Obama."

Seeing a trend here?

Hillary Clinton

These mark is, from what I can tell, NOT affiliated with Clinton or her campaign.

Statue of Hillary, Serial Number 76163132 & applied for by DareCloud Development Inc. This mark was filed for the sale of "figurine statues of the Statue of Liberty with the likeness of Hillary Clinton."

This application is abandoned & while the materials are not available online since the mark is so old, I have a pretty good guess as to why this mark never made it to registration.

Interestingly enough, I also came across a trademark filing that Clinton filed for the Heifer Project International for Good Neighbor to the World when she was a partner at the Rose Law Firm.

Read more about the other types of refusals the USPTO can hand down.

Logos Hoping to be Trademarked

Using this post as inspiration, I thought I'd take a look at some newly filed logos.



That little guy is Serial Number 77202055 & was filed for "non-downloadable ringtones, pre-recorded music, video and graphics presented to mobile communications devices via a global computer network and wireless networks."

Hmm, um, this next one may be a little NSFW depending on where you work. Considering it's owned by The Filthy Food Company, well, let's just say you can tell where they're going with this logo.


This take on da Vinci's Vitruvian Man was assigned Serial Number 77199434 for "Shirts; Jeans; T-shirts; Sweaters; Jackets; Pants; Hats; Caps; Undergarments; Belts; Socks; Coats"

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Tee Hee

Talking to new business owners every day really shows me how alive the creative spirit (as well as funny bones) is in the business world. Checking out new trademark listings accomplishes this too.

Here's just a smidgen of the 1100+ that were filed on June 1st of this year:

Serial Number 77196095, Listen to Your Vegetables & Eat Your Parents - for infant clothing

Check out the logo too. Those are some warped vegetables.

Serial Number 76677705, Hangovers Sports Bar & Grill - for clothing

Shhh, not so loud.

Serial Number 77195398, You Deserve Cupcakes - for baked goods

I couldn't agree more. Everyone deserves cupcakes.