Law Commons^™

Trademark Extortion: The End Of Trademark Law, Kenneth L. Port

Kenneth L. Port

Trademark litigation in America today is undergoing a profound change. Based on a review of all trademark cases reported since the Lanham Act took effect, this article concludes that this profound change is due to 鍍rademark extortion,・the use of strike suits and the like to deter market entrants. All 7,500 reported trademark decisions between 1947 and 2005 were read. Of those, 2,659 were truly substantive cases that terminated a trademark law suit. The claimant of a trademark right prevailed only 51% of the time. They prevailed in getting an injunction in only 55% of those cases demanding one. Only 5.5% …

Trademark Extortion: The End Of Trademark Law, Kenneth L. Port

Kenneth L. Port

Trademark litigation in America today is undergoing a profound change. Based on a review of all trademark cases reported since the Lanham Act took effect, this article concludes that this profound change is due to 鍍rademark extortion,・the use of strike suits and the like to deter market entrants. All 7,500 reported trademark decisions between 1947 and 2005 were read. Of those, 2,659 were truly substantive cases that terminated a trademark law suit. The claimant of a trademark right prevailed only 51% of the time. They prevailed in getting an injunction in only 55% of those cases demanding one. Only 5.5% …

The (Boundedly) Rational Basis Of Trademark Liability, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

This article argues that trademark infringement and dilution are best understood as commercial behavior that manipulates the cognitive biases of consumers, and as such threatens to render their heuristic judgments persistently inaccurate. In this view, trademark liability—whether imposed under the label of infringement or dilution—serves neither to protect property rights of trademark owners, nor to protect them against the unfair trade practices of competitors, but to shape consumer markets in such a way as to conform to the innate cognitive processes of boundedly rational consumers. The trademark regime can thus be understood as a legal apparatus designed (albeit perhaps unconsciously) …

No Reason To Live: Dilution Laws As Unconstitutional Restrictions On Commercial Speech, Mary Lafrance

Scholarly Works

Traditionally, trademark and unfair competition laws have protected trademark owners against unauthorized uses of their marks that are likely to confuse or mislead consumers about the origin of goods or services. If a particular use is not likely to confuse or mislead, then it is not actionable under traditional infringement regimes. When applied to commercial speech, as opposed to noncommercial expression, traditional trademark and unfair competition laws generally have survived scrutiny under the First Amendment, because these laws restrict only commercial speech that is false or misleading.

Dilution laws, however, do not restrict speech that is false or misleading. Dilution …