Posts Tagged: "Notice of Opposition"

Rescuing Rapunzel: Suffolk Law Professors and students work to keep fairy tale princess in the public domain

United Trademark Holdings Inc. is attempting to trademark Rapunzel (and likely has plans for other fairy tale princess names) for its line of dolls. Law Professors Rebecca Curtin and Loletta Darden of Suffolk University Law School, along with help from Suffolk’s Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic, filed an opposition to United’s trademark registration on May 9, 2018. In their Notice of Opposition, they argue that the name Rapunzel belongs to the public.  “No company should ever be able to be the only company that can call their doll Rapunzel, because Rapunzel is already in the public domain,” said Curtin, who specializes in intellectual property law. “Rapunzel already belongs to everyone.”

Trademark Food Fight: Did In-N-Out Burger Abandon the Triple Triple?

Smashburger asserts that In-N-Out stopped using the Triple Triple mark and thus, abandoned its rights, when the triple meat, triple cheese hamburger was rebranded as the 3X3 hamburger over three years ago, the generally understood benchmark for abandonment of rights. And, in my research of In-N-Out’s archived web pages, as far back as 2012, In-N-Out appears to have done exactly what Smashburger asserts – it replaced the Triple Triple hamburger from its Not-So-Secret Menu with the 3X3 hamburger. Magically, references to the Triple Triple mark reappear on its Not-So-Secret Menu in early September of 2017, right after Smashburger sought to cancel In-N-Out’s Triple Triple registration. This leapfrogging of rights may be the saving grace to Smashburger’s rights in its Triple Double mark.