Owning Some TM Happiness: Bubly ≠ Bubbly?

For a few months now, the Minneapolis skyway system has been flooded with a variety of fresh, creative, eye-popping advertising to promote Pepsi’s new bubly sparkling water collection: Although not a lie (the bottles I’ve seen clearly reference Pepsi), you’d never know from this ad or the trademark registration that Pepsi is behind bubly, since an Irish entity located in Bermuda owns the mark. Thoughts about Pepsi’s line of reasoning for having ownership rest with an Irish entity located in Bermuda? Taxes maybe? Yet, it is clear the market knows this is a Pepsi launch, wonder what Coke, owner of Tab, thinks? Sipping a bubbly drink, like sparkling water, necessarily has bubbles, explaining why the USPTO required a disclaimer of the word “bubbly,” even though the mark includes bubly, not bubbly. Although it might be nice to own a standard character registration for the misspelled and un-disclaimed wording bubly, that…

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