Will company with product with &#174; sue me if my company name is the same as their product? I have purchased the company name Xxxxx Media in a province in Canada, but I recently realized that the product Xxxxx® is trademarked in the United States. I wish to sell my products in the US soon so I am wondering if I should purchase a different name instead so that I do not get sued by the company who has trademarked Xxxxx®. Will I get sued?
First of all, anyone can sue for more or less anything, with a good case or without. We have no possible way to predict who will sue or for what. What we might be able to predict is whether in certain circumstances a suit has plausible legal merit, and if someone filed such a suit, there would be a reasonable chance of winning it. Even that often depends on detailed facts which cannot be discussed or addressed here. Trademark protection is limited in several ways. First of all, trademark protection is limited by country. Each country has a different set of trademark laws, and a different mechanism for registering trademarks or determining which marks are protected, although there are many similarities. If a mark is protected in the US, that does not give grounds for suit in Canada, although if Canadian products or services are sold into the US, there could be a suit there. Secondly, trademarks are protected for specific industries or kinds of products/services. for example, "Bass Ale" is a well-known trademark for a beverage. But that does not mean that "Bass Media" used to identify a media company, would infringe that mark, because a drink and a media company are very different things, and one would not be likely to be confused with the other. Thirdly, some marks are "descriptive" while others are "distinctive" or "original". For example, "Tasty burgers" is descriptive. It describes the product (or claims to, at least). "Quadzos Burgers" is original. It is a coined word that has no meaning except to name this product. Original marks get significantly stronger protection than descriptive marks. Fourthly, Trademarks only protect against uses in trade, or in commerce. If you are not selling anything, or doing business using a mark, you are probably not infringing that mark's protection. Finally, and most important, the key question is whether a reasonable person in the market would be confused into thinking that the alleged infringer is the same as the maker of the goods or services named by the mark, or is endorsed or approved by that maker. Trademark protection is supposed to prevent one person or firm from benefiting by the reputation and good will of a product or firm with which they have no connection, from, in effect, falsely advertising "I am the same as those guys". If no reasonable person will be confused, then there is probably no infringement. If reasonable people might well be confused, there might well be infringement.
The register of trademarks can indeed be searched before an application is filed, and any prudent applicant will make, or pay an expert to make, such a search. Note that each country has its own trademark register (although some EU countries are working on a shared EU register, I understand). Marks registered in one country will not be protected under the laws of another, unless they separately qualify for protection under the laws of the second country. Note that in the US, marks that have never been registered but are in active use receive some trade mark protection, although not as much as those that have been registered. Searching for unregistered marks in current use is significantly harder than searching for registered marks. Application may be refused for conflict with an active, unregistered mark. Also in the US, registered marks may have their registrations canceled if they are not in use for a significant time, I believe at least 5 years. Many advise hiring a firm that specializes in trademark applications to do the entire application, including searches. This involves significant added cost. US trademark searches may be done via the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) Some information about doing such searches is provided at Search trademark database (an official USPTO page). That page states: Private trademark attorneys If you are an applicant, registrant, or party to Trademark Trial and Appeal Board proceedings domiciled in the United States or its territories, you are not required to have a U.S.-licensed attorney represent you at the USPTO. However, deciding what to search for and interpreting your results can be complicated. There are many factors to consider in determining likelihood of confusion. We can’t advise you on how to do a clearance search for your mark, do one for you, or interpret your search results. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to hire a U.S.-licensed attorney who specializes in trademark law to guide you throughout the application process. If you are a foreign-domiciled applicant, registrant, or party to Trademark Trial and Appeal Board proceedings, you must be represented at the USPTO by an attorney who is licensed to practice law in the United States. See the why hire a private trademark attorney webpage to learn more about what an attorney can do for you and how to find one. For more information about conducting a clearance search, please watch the news broadcast-style video titled “Searching” (video #3 in the Trademark Information Network (TMIN) series). I am sure that similar searches of the register in other countries are available.
You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.
Is this legal? Generally yes, unless it unlawfully exceeds the scope of the license. Also, if it is, how can I check if it's permitted by the original store's EULA? Read the whole EULA, focusing on terms related to resale, assignment, and transferability.
Can you ask the company to add the spelled out of the number to the text? If this will make you more comfortable. Also, I sometimes found an English text from European body that use the format of 12456 (no thousand mark at all) or 12 456 (use space).
I don't think so. While JSON stands for &quot;JavaScript Object Notation&quot;, it doesn't say that. So the term &quot;JSON&quot; isn't infringing on a trademark for &quot;JavaScript&quot;. To sue somebody because of an alleged trademark infringement, one needs to prove that the offender abused a trade name of the suing company in a way to make the public believe the offending company was related to the suing company. Nobody is even trying that by just using a file format. The file structure itself was developed as an open standard, so they can't claim any rights on that. I have not heard about a company claiming rights in file structures recently, because the data is considered the property of the user, not of the company that wrote the program it was created with. And users are often no longer accepting file formats that can only be read by a specific (expensive) application from a particular company. They want to be flexible to change their vendor and keep the data.
My gut response without really analyzing it (which is honestly what a lot of these cases boil down to in the end) is that the proposed name would imply an affiliation with the company that does not exist. A case challenging that name could be expensive and come out either way. Instead, "The [Wife's Name] Toy Museum" with descriptive material in brochures and on a website saying that the exhibits were manufactured by "Toy Company", which is a nominative use that does not imply an affiliation with the Company would be a wiser move.
A basic rule of trademark law is that a trademark is protected only for use in the same industry, or in regard to the same general sort of thing. "Maxwell House" for example, is the name of a brand of Coffee, and no doubt a trademark. If A business used it as the name of a brand of mobile home, it would not infringe the mark of the coffee brand. "Java" as a term for coffee , has been slang for any and all coffee at least as far back as WWII. I doubt that it is a currently active trademark in any case. It is, however, the name of a currently active programming language. Calling a new computer technology "Java" would probably infringe that (although the makers of javascript, a quite different computer language, seem to have gotten away with it). But it is hard to see how a realty company would so infringe. Of course there might be details which would cause this name to be infringing in fact, that I have no way of knowing. You could play safe with Sumatra Realty instead. Evin a quickly dismissed suit for trademark infringement could cost a startup time and money that might be a fatal handicap.