NJ Trademark Lawyers

Trademarks allow end users to identify a certain company as the source of particular products and services that they trust. Practically anything is capable of functioning as a trademark, including a word, a phrase (Little Ceasars Pizza “Pizza, Pizza”), a letter or letters (F for pocketbooks), a number or series of numbers (346 for clothing), a pictorial scene, a smell (a fresh fruity fragrance reminiscent of oranges for paint), a sound (the sound of “you got mail” for AOL), a color (pink for insulation), packaging, (a fanciful bottle or label for alcoholic beverages) and product configurations (the shape of a lamp, for example). A trademark gives a business protection against the unauthorized use of the mark. However, to be able to enforce this legal protection a business should always register the trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The Pagliara Law Group can assist you with all aspects of federal trademark law in New Jersey including:

• Trademark registration
• Trademark protection and litigation
• Defense against claims of Trademark infringement

Trademark Registration Enforceable rights in a trademark are based on the legitimate use of the mark. If you register your mark you will receive several advantages including:

• Constructive notice to the public of your claim of ownership of the mark
• A legal presumption of ownership
• The exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods and/or services listed in your registration
• The ability to bring an action concerning the mark in Federal court
• The right to use your registration to obtain registration in foreign countries

Pagliara Law Group can assist you with trademark registration process:

• We can hire a service firm to conduct a search of the U.S. Trademark Registry to determine if the mark is available.
• We can file your application and hold discussions with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and anyone who may object to the registration

Trademark Protection and Litigation It is equally important to register a mark as it is to protect a mark.

We can litigate a claim that may be similar or identical  to your mark.

TRADE DRESS

Trade dress is the total image of a product used to present it to its purchasers. Such things as product’s size, shape, color, graphics, packaging, and label can all be components in trade dress. A trademark on the other hand is thought of as something more specific, such as a name or logo. As the law developed from protecting mainly packaging, to covering certain products themselves.

Companies often focus solely on their names and logos, but trade dress can represent a valuable type of protection, one that can help prevent other from riding off the goodwill that the dress represents.

Consider these two examples:

– A delivery company arrives in a large brown truck. A driver clad in brown shirt and shorts hops and brings a package. You don’t notice the name on the side of the truck, but you assume it is UPS. Turns out the company’s name is Speedy Delivery and its uses a flying pigeon for its logo. If UPS had only sought protection in its name and its shield emblem, then it would have no recourse against Speedy Delivery, because the names and logos are totally different. But clearly, the consuming public associates brown delivery trucks with UPS, as UPS has taught it to do. Because UPS has made efforts to establish its brown trade dress in the mind of the consumer, it can rightfully prevent other delivery companies from using that color in confusing ways.

– Your boyfriend bows down on one knee in front of you and presents a small light-blue box. Your eyes get watery as he slips a shiny diamond ring onto your finger. You’re excited to have him and a new Tiffany ring. But in actuality, your misty eyes kept you from seeing that you’ve just gotten engaged with a ring from Canterby’s, a completely acceptable local jeweler in the mall. Clearly, the name Canterby’s is very different from Tiffany’s, and no consumer is likely to confuse the two. Had Tiffany & Co. not invested significant marketing dollars in developing that little blue box to an icon of its jewelry and diligently sought protection in the color, it wouldn’t be able to do much: any jeweler could just wrap its rings up into a blue box and ride Tiffany’s goodwill. But Tiffany has educated everyone to associate light blue boxes with Tiffany products, and it thus has one tool to prevent confusion where it might otherwise have none.

So trade dress can be a valuable method of distinguishing your company from others in a way that trademark law – as most typically think of it – cannot. But trade dress rights don’t come about by accident. To receive the benefit of trade dress protection, a company should deliberately plan and consistently execute a trade dress strategy.

Trade dress can be federally registered. For longer-existing trade dress to register, the USPTO may require proof of acquired distinctiveness, which can be shown by advertising and marketing campaigns, customer surveys, or historical documentation of the trade dress. Newly-adopted forms of dress can be rejected initially, though, and they can generally be copied freely at the outset, since they don’t have the acquired distinctiveness that consumers recognize and that provides the basis for protection.

As a result, the media is sometimes used to quickly establish rights in trade dress. Large scale advertising campaigns, multiple forms of media, and the use of look-for advertising can form part of the  media strategy. Look-for advertising is incredibly effective. Think: “What can brown do for you?” When you hear that line, you immediately think of UPS and you reinforce the connection between the color brown and UPS.

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