From goffmac747@aol.com Sat Sep 22 21:44:02 2007
Subject:Re: "clonewheel' trademark, was: Diversi


You'd be a surprised, there is a big mall store conglomerate in Asia called Shoe Mart and the owner's name has made him a billionaire in USD$... and he doesn't sell just shoes... it's like Sears and Safeway put together.. In fact he just uses the name SM...but is actually called SM Shoe Mart..The SM is redundant for Shoe Mart and has nothing to do with the owner's real name...

True this forum is not the place to discuss copyright. It's interesting though that we do...and as mentioned earlier, your money will take you as far as you can go till you run out...and run up against someone with bigger money, or something that demands it...





-----Original Message-----
From: stateofmin@aol.com
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:23 pm
Subject: Re: "clonewheel' trademark, was: [CWSG] Diversi

The worst marks are descriptive and many of them cannot even be enforced or


enforced well. If I called a shoe store, the Shoe Store, it is a name but a

laughable tradename. It is completely descriptive and doesn't distinguish

your goods from the goods of any other shoe store. (On the other hand, the

band named "The Band" somehow was successful is using a completely descriptive

name as a form of tradename. I have no idea whether their name was

trademarked or not).



First to file at the federal level does not necessarily "win." Trademark

law is a complicated mixture of federal, state and common law. Federal

trademark protection gives the owner certain statutory rights which go beyond

common law. In fact, establishing "first use" in commerce is critical in a

litigation over the enforcement of a trademark in many situations. There are many

owners of trademarks who might have rights as to a mark except in certain

geographic areas where another use was established earlier.



Although I am not a trademark specialist, my father was for over forty

years. I spent many hours doing trademark searches as a kid. As a

lawyer/musician, this is probably not an appropriate site to debate trademark law and

anyone who wants to protect a mark should see a good intellectual property lawyer.

There are areas of gray and screwing up can be costly.





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