The other Redbox case: the color may fade, but not the mark

Redbox Automated Retail, LLC v. Xpress Retail LLC, 2018 WL 950098, No. 17 C 5596 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 20, 2018)Redbox sued defendant DVDXpress alleging trademark infringement and false advertising; DVDXpress moved to dismiss and asserted counterclaims/affirmative defenses, some of which the court here rejects. The parties compete in the market for DVD rental services through automated vending machines called kiosks. Redbox has registered trademarks for its word mark and for the kiosks’ red color scheme. Redbox alleged that DVDXpress recently began using kiosks that are entirely red in color, making them confusingly similar to Redbox’s kiosks. Redbox also alleged infringement from DVDXPress’s use the term “redbox” in the metadata for its website in order to capture searches for Redbox.  [Practice note: this use of metadata is probably useless and though it’s unlikely to be confusing in practice, the case law here is terrible. It is thus risky…

Read more detail on Recent Business Law posts –

This entry was posted in Business law and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply