An additional note, trademark lawyers are often obligated to try and sue people over trademarks, even if they'd rather not, because if they don't zealously defend their trademark, it's considered 'weakened' and that can then become evidence against them in some future case when a different party infringes.
So the blue cross people were doing what they had to do. It sure is funny though how almost every law is interpreted in a way that maximizes future legal work involved.
"An additional note, trademark lawyers are often obligated to try and sue people over trademarks, even if they'd rather not, because if they don't zealously defend their trademark, it's considered 'weakened' and that can then become evidence against them in some future case when a different party infringes."
This is mostly false as a concept, and false as written.
It's pretty much a fiction trademark lawyers use to try to convince people they really like them, but they have to be suing them now.
There is no special "if you don't sue people, you lose" defense for trademarks, on that front it's the same laches defense as anything else.
About the only thing you risk is loss of distinctiveness, and only then if you are not otherwise doing things to try to maintain brand distinctiveness.
In fact, there is a specific "doctrine of progressive encroachment" that allows you to let people minimally invade, and only sue for infringement when there use expands past something small and minimal.
Even in cases where all of this fails, nobody has "lost a mark" except to genericness (which is unpreventable, in reality). The last case i'm aware of to confront this issue, the defendant was still barred from using the mark in the future, the plaintiff just got no money damages.
The requirement to protect your trademark is a good thing.
There are a fairly limited number of useful marks because companies need fairly short names. Imagine if trademarks worked like copyright and modern companies had to worry about infringing the mark of a company that hasn't traded since 1940?
I am reminded of the occasion back in 1986 when I wrote a piece for a technology magazine where I described networking standards as an 'alphabeti-spaghetti'. I received a warning letter from Heinz' lawyers a few weeks after publication.
Comments
An additional note, trademark lawyers are often obligated to try and sue people over trademarks, even if they'd rather not, because if they don't zealously defend their trademark, it's considered 'weakened' and that can then become evidence against them in some future case when a different party infringes.
So the blue cross people were doing what they had to do. It sure is funny though how almost every law is interpreted in a way that maximizes future legal work involved.
"An additional note, trademark lawyers are often obligated to try and sue people over trademarks, even if they'd rather not, because if they don't zealously defend their trademark, it's considered 'weakened' and that can then become evidence against them in some future case when a different party infringes."
This is mostly false as a concept, and false as written. It's pretty much a fiction trademark lawyers use to try to convince people they really like them, but they have to be suing them now.
There is no special "if you don't sue people, you lose" defense for trademarks, on that front it's the same laches defense as anything else.
About the only thing you risk is loss of distinctiveness, and only then if you are not otherwise doing things to try to maintain brand distinctiveness.
In fact, there is a specific "doctrine of progressive encroachment" that allows you to let people minimally invade, and only sue for infringement when there use expands past something small and minimal.
Even in cases where all of this fails, nobody has "lost a mark" except to genericness (which is unpreventable, in reality). The last case i'm aware of to confront this issue, the defendant was still barred from using the mark in the future, the plaintiff just got no money damages.
boo hoo.
It's almost like most of our laws were written by a bunch of lawyers.
The requirement to protect your trademark is a good thing.
There are a fairly limited number of useful marks because companies need fairly short names. Imagine if trademarks worked like copyright and modern companies had to worry about infringing the mark of a company that hasn't traded since 1940?
And knowing who paid the lawyers is an effective tl;dr -- what the law truly seeks to accomplish.
I am reminded of the occasion back in 1986 when I wrote a piece for a technology magazine where I described networking standards as an 'alphabeti-spaghetti'. I received a warning letter from Heinz' lawyers a few weeks after publication.
The alternative is the patent situation where you can turn up a 15 year old patent that hasn't been enforced and sue everybody over it.
If patent enforcement worked like trademark enforcement, then trolls would have a much harder time.