Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks and Other IP)

Trademark * Carter v. Oath Holdings, 17-cv-07086-BLF (N.D. Cal. June 21, 2018) Courts have held that an online provider does not “use” a mark under the meaning of the Lanham Act when its search engine returns a search result based on an input of a consumer. Perfect 10, 2013 WL 2109963, at *14 (“Defendants do not ‘use’ Plaintiff’s marks in a commercial transaction by merely offering a search function that allows third parties to search for images using Plaintiff’s marks as search terms.”). As such, merely returning search results to purportedly display a trademark does not show that Defendant is liable under the Lanham Act….insofar as Plaintiff alleges that Defendant is liable for trademark infringement unless its search engine returns only search results from Plaintiff’s own website, Plaintiff’s theory is inconsistent with the Ninth Circuit’s view of search engine functionality. See Toyota Motor Sales,…

Read more detail on Recent Legal Marketing posts –

This entry was posted in Legal Marketing and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply