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::	Trademark Law
::	Uses
::	Protectable Marks
::	Consumer Protection
::	Dilution
::	Policing Trademarks
::	Comparisons to Copyright and Patent Law
::	Conflict of Trademarks and Domain Names
::	Domain Names used as Trademarks

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DID YOU KNOW?

In 2001, 181,693 Trademark applications were submitted in the United States.

Of those 181,693 applications, 124,016 were accepted.

Policing Trademarks - Contact a Lawyer

Policing Trademarks : What is it?

Trademarks must be actively used and defended. A company claiming (even registering) a trademark that fails to make active use of it, or fails to defend it against infringement, may lose the exclusive right to it. Aside from inconsistent product quality, failure to use the mark for a period of time (often statutorily defined) will result in abandonment of the mark, meaning that it is available to anyone to use. An abandoned mark is not irrevocably in the public domain, but instead can be reregistered by anyone who has regained exclusive and active use, including the original mark owner.

Further, if a court rules that a formerly trademarked term has become "generic" through common use (such that the average consumer doesn't view it as a trademark), it may also be ruled invalid. For example, the Bayer company's trademark "Aspirin" has been ruled generic in the United States, so other companies may use that name for acetylsalicylic acid as well (though it is still a trademark in Canada). Xerox for copiers and Band-Aid for adhesive bandages are both trademarks that are at risk of becoming generic, which both brands actively try to fight. In order to prevent them from becoming generic, and to prove that they are attempting to defend the trademark, trademark owners often contact those who appear to be using the trademark incorrectly, from web page authors to dictionary editors, and request that they cease the improper usage. For example, Adobe sent e-mails to many web authors using the term "photoshopped" telling them that they should only use the term "modified by Adobe® Photoshop®." Xerox has also taken out print advertisements declaring that you cannot "xerox" a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox Brand copying machine. Such efforts may or may not be successful in preventing genericism in the long run, which depends less on the mark owner's efforts and more on how the public actually perceives and uses the mark. In fact, legally it is more important that the trademark holder visibly and actively seems to attempt to prevent its trademark from becoming generic, regardless of real sucsess.

One principle of trademark law in various jurisdictions in Europe is that of 'wrongful threats', which is designed to prevent large corporations from 'bullying' smaller companies. Where one person makes a threat to sue another for trade mark infringement, without a genuine basis or intent to carry out that threat, the threat itself becomes a basis for legal action. This power is used quite frequently; in addition to the obvious cases where the person threatening never had a trade mark it catches out foreign corporations who have a trade mark in their home jurisdiction but not in the country concerned and companies who have a trade mark which has lapsed or, if the mark is not strong enough for dilution protection, is not for the goods/services concerned. The final group who get caught by this provision are those claimants/plaintiffs who sue, and find that the court agrees with a defendant who claims the that mark is invalid for some reason (such as non-use). In that case the mark was never valid, and thus all threats to sue on it were groundless—the defendant can walk away with damages from the claimant.